October 11, 2025

Atlas Shrugged Revisited | “The Theme” [01|01]

Why I Picked Up Atlas Shrugged in 2025

Honestly, why do it? I picked up Atlas Shrugged primarily because I kept hearing about it — over and over — from Silicon Valley people (not because I wanted to read a philosophical epic).

Founders, startup thinkers, venture capitalists. It kept showing up in the background of American tech culture. Peter Thiel references it constantly in interviews. Elon Musk called it one of his favorites. You don’t have to love these guys, but you can’t deny they’re shaping the future most of us in the West will soon live in (or already do). If you want to understand the worldview that is shaping their products, which in turn are massively shaping your own life, you eventually have to understand Atlas Shrugged.

As someone raised and educated in Germany, doing this was both strange and fascinating. Ayn Rand is almost invisible here — rarely read, barely mentioned. There’s no deep cultural cult of individualism or capitalism as moral ideals here. So I became curious: why is this book so influential in America, and especially among people who build things? After all, Rand-fans claim it's the second-most influential book on their lives after the bible.

However since I don’t have the attention span to sit through 1.000+ pages anymore, I decided to approach it as an experiment. I started with the audiobook but quickly realized Atlas Shrugged is too dense to absorb passively. So I turned the book into a dialogue with AI.

I found a custom GPT model trained on Atlas Shrugged and Rand’s major essays — The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Anthem, The Fountainhead. Using it felt like reading inside the book itself. I could pause mid-chapter to ask questions, challenge ideas, or even “speak” directly to characters. The book became interactive — a kind of living philosophical simulation.

This blog-series is the result of that self-experiment: a deep dive into Chapter 1, not just a summary but a reflection — on its ideas, its story, and how its vision of reason, industry, and individuality still resonates (and clashes) with our world today.

The Story Begins in Decline

Atlas Shrugged opens on a tone of quiet decay: Trains are late. Cities are crumbling. People seem dulled, half-asleep. Everyone is muttering the same strange question: “Who is John Galt?” It’s not really a question — it’s a punchline. A surrender. A ritual that signals: we don’t know anymore, and we’ve stopped trying.

This sets the emotional baseline of Rand’s world: a society slowly disintegrating, not through war or plague, but through resignation. Through the loss of clarity, competence, and will. And then we meet Dagny Taggart, a railroad executive who — unlike everyone around her — sees clearly and acts decisively. She’s the anti-fog. While others murmur, she thinks. While others defer, she decides. She’s introduced as a calm, precise mind moving through a world of vague, fearful drift.

It struck me how timeless this mood feels. Even though Rand wrote this in the 1950s, it resonates deeply in 2025 — an era of algorithmic distraction, institutional distrust, and information fog. Our tools have advanced. Our clarity? Not so much. The opening chapter isn’t just setting a scene. It’s making a diagnosis: the world collapses not when (nuclear) bombs drop, but when people stop thinking.

Why Did Rand Write This in the First Place?

This was one of my first real questions. Why would Ayn Rand — living in booming, post-war America — write a thousand-page novel to defend capitalism, reason, and individualism? Yes, the Cold War was going on - but wasn’t the West winning?

Digging deeper, I realized that for Rand, the real threat wasn’t communism invading from the outside, but collectivism creeping in from within. Having fled the Soviet Union, she saw firsthand what happens when the individual is crushed by ideology. Her fear was that America — seduced by guilt, altruism, or “social progress” — might voluntarily (!) give up its freedoms. Not through violence, but through moral confusion. In light of the post-9/11 era and the ongoing trend of mass surveillance, this philosophical underpinning feels particularly relevant today. 

In her mind, the culture was already drifting — morally and philosophically — toward a kind of spiritual socialism: sacrificing competence to sentiment, excellence to fairness, truth to comfort. And so she wrote a novel to morally rehabilitate capitalism, not just as a system, but as a way of life. That reframed everything for me. This isn’t a story about trains. It’s a philosophical war story.

Dagny’s Gamble: Betting on Reason in a Foggy World

The main plot movement of Chapter 1 revolves around Dagny’s bold decision to rebuild the Rio Norte Line — a critical but crumbling railroad line in Colorado — using an experimental metal invented by steel magnate Hank Rearden. Everyone thinks she’s crazy for doing that. The metal is new. Unapproved. Untrusted. The State Science Institute - a government-sponsored body - issues a vague public warning — full of insinuations, zero evidence. Journalists pick up the fear. Her brother - James Taggart - wants to delay.

But Dagny doesn’t hesitate. She’s read the research. She understands the material. She sees the stakes. And she makes the call. This is Rand’s moral ideal in action: The mind that sees clearly, and acts without evasion. Dagny doesn’t defer to the crowd. She doesn’t wait for approval. She takes responsibility for her judgment — even if she has to stand alone. And here, I saw how plot and philosophy align: Dagny’s decision isn’t just a business move. It’s a moral act — because she chooses reason over fear and clarity over drift.

Evasion of Reality: Rand’s Moral First Principle

This is one of Rand’s most radical and important ideas: All evil begins with evasion. Not with malice. Not with ignorance. But with the willful refusal to see reality for what it is. She believes that reality is objective, that truth is discoverable, and that our only tool for grasping it is reason. So when you act against what you know, when you fake, when you self-deceive — you are committing a moral failure, no matter how polite or well-intentioned it looks.

That’s why James Taggart’s decision to invest in a failing Mexican rail project isn’t just foolish — it’s evil. Because it’s based on sentiment, wishful thinking, and the evasion of facts.

But this raised a real question for me: What about today? In 2025, isn’t the problem less “evasion” and more confusion? We live in a time of information overload, filter bubbles, and deep fragmentation. It’s not that people deny reality — it’s that we’re not even sure what it is anymore, especially in the age of AI. Everyone lives in a different feed, a different algorithm, a different narrative. Even the concept of “truth” feels under siege.

So I wondered: is Rand’s idea of one shared, objective reality still viable? She would probably say yes — and that our confusion today is the result of decades of philosophical surrender. That we stopped teaching logic. That we replaced truth with feelings. That our cultural fog is the price of evasion — not its opposite.

This is also why she insists that politics is downstream of morality, and morality downstream of philosophy. If a culture teaches that truth is relative or that feelings override facts, then its ethical code will drift toward self‑contradiction, and its political institutions will inevitably follow. Tyranny, in Rand’s view, is not born in parliaments but in epistemology — in the moment a mind decides that wishing makes it so. Rebuilding a society, therefore, begins not with new laws but with the discipline of refusing to fake reality in the first place.

Even if I don’t fully agree, I found the sharpness of her diagnosis compelling. She offers no easy comfort — only the hard demand to see and think clearly.

Do the 1% Really Carry the World?

One of Rand’s more controversial themes appears subtly in Chapter 1: the idea that a tiny minority of innovators uphold civilization, and that everyone else is — to some degree — dependent on them. Dagny is not just efficient. She’s visionary. Rearden doesn’t just produce metal — he invents it. Rand makes a strong moral distinction between creation and execution, between the one who conceives a breakthrough and the many who follow it.

But I pushed back on this. What about workers? Teachers? Maintenance crews? Aren’t they the ones who keep the world running? Shouldn’t that be honored too? Rand would likely say: yes — but that creation is the moral origin of value. Without the thinker, the innovator, the producer, there is no work to maintain. No tools to use. No systems to operate. And if society starts punishing those few minds — or guilting them into silence — the whole structure collapses. It’s an elitist view, yes. But it’s consistent.

Still, I wasn’t sure if I agreed with her definition of “productive.” Is someone only moral if they invent? Is a life of support, caregiving, or service morally inferior? Rand seems to say: all honest work is moral — but the creators are sacred. Without them, there’s nothing. As we move into an age of AI, where automation will increasingly take over the execution part, I will likely spend the next few years pondering this question: what does it mean for a human to be a creator, not just an executor, and to be "productive" in a different sense - one that goes beyond just getting work done?

The Crowd vs the Individual Mind: Madness or Wisdom?

Rand’s view of the crowd is unmistakably hostile. The public fears Rearden Metal — not because of facts, but because of perception. The State Science Institute acts less like a center of knowledge and more like a political PR agency. And when Dagny makes her bold decision, people don’t debate — they mock. This made me think about the tension between:

- Wisdom of the crowds — the idea that collective decisions, if well-structured, can be smart (and outsmart individual ones)

- Madness of crowds — the historical reality that mobs often descend into fear and (self-)destruction

Rand is firmly in the second camp. She doesn’t trust democracy, consensus, or mass sentiment. She believes only in independent judgment — which often means standing alone.

Again, I felt a deep cultural tension here: as a European, I grew up with a lot of trust in public institutions, experts, and democratic systems. Rand’s distrust felt extreme. But again, her point is less about politics and more about epistemology — if people stop thinking independently, the result is not solidarity, but drift.

Political Institutions and the Temptation of Fear

One critique worth raising about Rand’s portrayal of public institutions is that she arguably paints them as too easily swayed — almost caricatures of cowardice. In practice, many state agencies are staffed by scientists, engineers, and analysts who base their judgments on data and rigorous review. These institutions can be remarkably resilient and deeply connected to empirical knowledge.

Yet Rand’s criticism still carries weight: even the most robust bodies become vulnerable the moment experts prioritize political optics over truth. When bureaucrats hesitate to publish accurate findings, or when scientists self‑censor because their conclusions are unpopular, the institutional shell may remain intact, but its epistemic core begins to rot. The danger Rand points to is not that public agencies are inherently irrational, but that they can be instrumentalized — hollowed out by politics and turned into tools of evasion rather than instruments of reason.

Rand vs Nietzsche: Similar Tone, Different Foundation

At many points, Rand sounds a lot like Nietzsche: exalting greatness, despising herd morality and celebrating independence, clarity & will.  But the deeper you go, the clearer the difference becomes. Nietzsche’s ideal — the Übermensch — acts from instinct, strength, artistic energy. He creates values from himself. He transcends morality. Rand’s ideal — like Dagny or Rearden — acts from reason. They discover moral truths in the structure of reality, and live by them. For Rand, morality is objective — it’s not about self-expression, it’s about staying honest with the facts of existence.

So while both thinkers oppose the herd, Rand rejects Nietzsche’s spiritual mysticism. She sees him as too emotional, too vague, too romantic. She wants clarity — not will. Still, I couldn’t help but feel the family resemblance. The tone, the disdain for mediocrity, the insistence on rising above — it’s all there.

Final Thoughts on Chapter 1

As I closed Chapter 1, I realized this isn’t just a novel. It’s a philosophical provocation — one that forces you to engage, to reflect, to disagree. Rand is not subtle. She doesn’t try to please. But she does offer something rare: a moral vision of the individual — not as victim, but as origin. Not as a cog, but as a cause. Do I agree with all of it? No. Do I respect its clarity? Very much. We’ve covered maybe 1% of the book. But already, I’ve had more philosophical stimulation than in some university courses. I’m not reading Atlas Shrugged to become a Randian. I’m reading it to wrestle with big questions. And so far, it’s delivering. We’ll see what Chapter 2 brings.