Child of the 80s

Thanks to David Sirota, I get it now: I know who John Galt is. The valedictory speech that I gave to my 1982 high school graduating class (and then promptly lost, out of embarrassment) was an oh-so-thinly-veiled celebration of Ayn Rand's call for Creative Self-aggrandizment. I didn't know it at the time--I was never that self-aware--but I was only months ahead of my time, the perfect expression of the Eighties Individualism and Celebrity Worship that was to take over our culture in the course of the next decade. No wonder I have been so obsessed of late with not Making It Big. "Big" was the mantra of my young adulthood; "big" was--and is--our cultural definition of success. I feel like such an idiot. Like exactly the kind of drone-like sucker I despise, being, as I am, a card-carrying, valedictory follower of Mr. Galt. How am I ever going to live this down?

Comments

  1. Phul DeviApril 28, 2011 at 10:34 AM

    It makes so much sense that you are a Rand disciple.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fencing BearApril 28, 2011 at 10:56 AM

    No, I'm not. I'm a Rand survivor. I read her books (at, we should note, my stepmother's suggestion, gotta wonder there) at an impressionable age. I, like others, have been infected by them, but they are evil. But this is the way evil works: it looks fair at the time, but underneath conceals great foulness. See the text that I am translating on "Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary."

    ReplyDelete

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