The Invisible Mentor

Posts Tagged ‘Atlas Shrugged’

This is what we talked about on The Invisible Mentor Blog this week: The Early History of the Airplane by Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright, Wisdom of Life Profile: Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, and Senior Account Executive, National Speakers Bureau, Jeanne-Marie Robillard.

Adventures in Learning

An assortment of blog posts with information to help you in a variety of ways.

Adventures in Learning: Learning Tools and Resources to Help You Succeed in Today’s Fast-Paced World 

Booked for Mentoring

The Early History of the Airplane by Orville Wright and Wilbur Wright is a great book for mentoring because it teaches us to question everything, and not accept things as fact.

Booked for Mentoring: The Early History of the Airplane by Orville and Wilbur Wright 

Wisdom of Life Profile

Before the Russian Revolution, Rand and her family traveled across Europe – Austria Switzerland, England. She was a voracious reader, taught herself to read at age six, and was influenced by The Mysterious Valleyby French writer Maurice Champagne, and the writings of Victor Hugo and Walter Scott.

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Wisdom of Life: Ayn Rand, Philosopher, Author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead 

Interviews for Mentoring

This week we featured senior account executive for National Speakers Bureau, Jeanne-Marie Robillard. After her first year at university, while Robillard was working at a summer job, she attended a party and saw Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau standing by himself. She approached him and introduced herself. Read the interview to find out what happened. Here are Part One and Part Two of Jeanne-Marie Robillard’s interview.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

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Wisdom of Life: It’s seldom that anyone moves straight to the top in their career. Ayn Rand wanted to become a writer, however, she had to work as a movie extra, junior screenwriter, filing clerk, head of the wardrobe department, freelance script reader to achieve her goal. But she always made sure that she carved out the time to write.

Introduction: While getting a taste of American life via the American films she watched in university, Ayn Rand knew that she would some day live there. While living in Chicago for six months with her relatives, she changed her name from Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum to Ayn Rand. She took Ayn, a variant spelling of a Finnish author because she simply liked the way it sounded and Rand from her Remington Rand typewriter. Rand had always had a brilliant mind, and a country which offered many opportunities, allowed her to spread her wings and soar. Ayn Rand developed a branch of philosophy called objectivism and was the author of the international bestsellers Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, which are often selected as books that have a profound impact on the lives of others.

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Name: Ayn Rand (Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum)

Birth Date: February 1905 – March 1982

Job Functions: Author, Philosopher, Lecturer

Fields: Literature, Philosophy

Known For: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged

Favourite TV Programs: Charlie’s Angels and Kojak

Favourite American Author: Mickey Spillane

Short Biography of Ayn Rand

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905, Alissa Zinovievna Rosenbaum later known as Ayn Rand was the first of three daughters. Her father Zinovy Zacharovich, a chemist, owned a pharmacy business which he had built by himself. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, the communist government which was now in power, took ownership of the pharmacy – the reason being that one should live for the state and not for the self. In the blink of an eye, the fortunes of the Rosenbaum household changed and now there was little money.

Before the Russian Revolution, Rand and her family traveled across Europe – Austria Switzerland, England. She was a voracious reader, taught herself to read at age six, and was influenced by The Mysterious Valley by French writer Maurice Champagne, and the writings of Victor Hugo and Walter Scott. The works had “man as hero” as their underlying theme, which later formed the basis for Rand’s objectivism philosophy and her other works. It was on those vacations that Rand knew that she wanted to become a writer. Rand always had a strong interest in literature and films, and as a child, she wrote stories which emphasized heroism.

After completing high school in 1921, Rand attended University of Petrograd where she studied history with a minor in philosophy. While attending university, Rand got the opportunity to watch American movies, and she saw how different the two countries were – America versus Russia. Rand graduated from university in 1924, after which she started gathering the necessary paperwork that would allow her to travel to the United States. She had relatives living in Chicago who invited her to visit them there. While gathering the paperwork to visit the United States in 1924, Rand studied screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinema Arts.

Rand left Russia in January 1926 and never returned. On February 18, 1926, she arrived in New York City with $50 then traveled to Chicago where she stayed with relatives for six months. Her next stop was Hollywood, California where she worked as an extra on King of Kings a film directed by Cecil B. DeMille. Rand met actor Frank O’Connor whom she married in April 1929. She became an American citizen in 1931.

Pontius Pilate Judges Jesus in Cecil B DeMille’s King of Kings Pt 1

If you cannot view Pontius Pilate Judges Jesus in Cecil B DeMille’s King of Kings Pt 1, click here.

 Rand worked in various jobs in the film industry – movie extra, junior screenwriter, filing clerk, head of the wardrobe department, freelance script reader – but she always made time to write on the weekends. She sold Red Pawn in 1932 to Universal Studios though it was never produced, and she wrote the play The Night of January 16^th in 1934, which was ran in Hollywood and then spent seven months on Broadway in New York. Though she completed her novel We, the Living in 1933, it was accepted for publication in the US and England in 1936.

Rand and her husband moved to New York City in 1934 where she spent time mastering English, writing screenplays, short stories (Anthem (1938)). Her hard work and talent as a writer paid off because two of her screenplays appeared on Broadway.  Rand gained international acclaim in 1943 when The Fountainhead, which took seven years to write, was published, but it was Atlas Shrugged which was published in 1957 that was her literary masterpiece. She used her novels to express her objectivism philosophy, which espoused that “…reason is human being’s means of survival. Only through a process of reasoning – cold, hard, scientific, logical thought – can an individual understand the world and thus survive and prosper in it.”

The Fountainhead – Howard Roark Speech (Ayn Rand)

If you cannot view the YouTube video click here.

Because Rand witnessed the introduction of communism in Russian and her father losing a business he built up, she was very anti-communism, and had a strong sense of individualism. In 1947, she testified in front of the US House of Un-American Activities(HUAC) about communist penetration in the film industry. The process of the HUAC committee hearing resulted in people being blacklisted and that whole era is known as the McCarthy Era.

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Rand and O’Connor moved back to Los Angels in 1943 to write the screenplay for The Fountainhead. She and her husband returned permanently to New York in 1951. After writing Atlas Shrugged, Rand stopped writing fiction and became a visiting professor to Yale, Princeton, Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, Johns Hopkins, Ford Hall Forum, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the United States Military Academy at West Point where she lectured on her philosophy. She edited and published The Objectivist, and refined her philosophy over the years.

While Rand was writing Atlas Shrugged she met Canadian psychology student, Nathaniel Branden, who was studying for a doctoral degree in psychology. Both Rand and Branden were secular Jews who had changed their names. It is reported in many sources that Rand had a torrid affair with Branden, 29 years her junior. The affair lasted for 14 years. Rand encouraged Branden to develop a lecture series based on her novels – Rand’s basic philosophical principles. The initiative resulted in a 20-lecture course called “The Basic Principles of Objectivism,” offered through the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI). Branden charged $3.50 for each lecture or $70 for the entire series, which began in 1958.

Ayn Rand, along with Branden, his wife Barbara, Alan Greenspan, and a few others had launched the Objectivist movement. The cause was very successful and prosperous. In 1968 when Branden decided he wanted to split with Rand because he’d taken another lover, she was furious and expelled him. There were other incidents and activities going on the movement that Rand was against. The split between Rand and Branden resulted in the demise of the Nathaniel Branden Institute.

Why Ayn Rand’s Contribution Matters

A 1991 survey sponsored by the Library of Congress and Book-of-the-Month Club found that after the Bible, Atlas Shrugged was the most influential book in the lives of Americans. In 1998, a poll by Modern Library where readers chose the best 100 novels of the twentieth century, Atlas Shrugged took first place, The Fountainhead, second place and Anthem and We, the Living took seventh and eighth place.

Ayn Rand’s Steps to Success

• Knew what her passion was and pursued it relentlessly.
• Rand not only renamed herself, but also reinvented herself when she came to the US.
• Even when Rand worked odds jobs she wrote on weekends.
• Today it’s not uncommon for films or other literary works to have two endings. Rand wrote two endings for The Night of January 16^thbecause it required 12 people from the audience to act as jurors, so the ending would depend on whether or not the jurors found the defendant guilty or innocent.
• While writing The Fountainhead, Rand worked at an architectural firm in New York without pay so she could understand the way the business worked to make her novel authentic.
• Didn’t give up: The Fountainhead was rejected 12 times before Archibald G. Ogden, a young editor at Bobbs-Merrill accepted it for publication.
• Right or wrong, Rand had the courage to live what she believed.
• Ayn Rand, Joseph Conrad and Vladimir Nabokov were among a few writers to attain literary success in a language other than their own.

Pearls of Wisdom from Ayn Rand

• Take the time to discover what your passion in life is and pursue it relentlessly.
• Make whatever changes you need to make to become the person you were meant to be.
• Find time to practice and master your craft.

Why Ayn Rand Makes an Excellent Invisible Mentor

When you observe people, it’s important to pay attention to their good, and not-so-good traits. Confucius emulated the good qualities he observed in others, and checked himself for their not-so-good qualities. Ayn Rand created an impressive body of work, which we should aspire to do. And she pursued her passions relentlessly.

Ayn Rand’s Works

• We, the Living (1936)
• The Night of January 16th (1936)
• Anthem (1938; revised 1946, 1995)
• The Fountainhead (1943, film version 1949)
• Atlas Shrugged (1957)
• For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1961)
• The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966, 1976)
• Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (1967, 1990)
• The Romantic Manifesto (1969, 1971)
• The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971)
• Philosophy: Who Needs It (1982, 1984)
• The Early Ayn Rand: A Selection From Her Unpublished Fiction (1986)
• For the New Intellectual: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand (1996)
• Ayn Rand’s Marginalia: Her Critical Comments on the Writings of Over 20 Authors (1996)
• The Letters of Ayn Rand (1997)
• The Ayn Rand Column: Written for the Los Angeles Times (1998)
• The Journals of Ayn Rand (1999)
• The Ayn Rand Reader (1999)

Works Cited/Referenced

American Women Writers

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Modern American Literature

Encyclopedia of Science, Technology and Ethics

Concise Major 21^st Century Writer

Women in World History

Encyclopedia Judaica

Cold War Reference Library

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

YouTube Video Credit: Uploaded by GoldenSilents on Mar 28, 2009, Uploaded by Sidewinder77 on Aug 10, 2006

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Related articles

• How Ayn Rand Seduced Generations of Young Men and Helped Make the U.S. Into a Selfish, Greedy Nation (alternet.org)
• What Ayn Rand Told Me (harveyardman.wordpress.com)

Interviewee Name: Roger Dacre, Medical Doctor

Company Name: Dr. Roger I Dacre

Website: http://www.doctordacre.com

Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Dr. Roger Dacre: I was born in London, England and when I was about six years old my parents moved to Barbados. A year or so later they sent me back to attend boarding school in the UK. I attended medical school in the UK, in London, England and then I emigrated to Canada and did residency or specialty training in family medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. After that I worked for 10 years in my own family practice in Cambridge, Ontario and moved to Toronto about 16 years ago. I opened the practice that I am practicing in now and was practicing there initially alone, and subsequently over the last 10 years with Dr. Lise Paquette.

Avil Beckford: How do you integrate your personal and professional life?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I have a good group of friends and a supportive partner. That partner recognizes that my medical practice is important to my life, but the time is also important. I’m fortunate in that my partner, my friends and in many ways my patients seem to recognize that there are more parts to my life than just dealing with them.

Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?

Dr. Roger Dacre:

• Be true to myself.
• Find meaning for your life.
• Find and work to support yourself.
• Look for and cherish friends.

Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I’m a very avid theatre goer. I love movies. I like going to restaurants and I love going for walks, and I do a lot of traveling.

Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I think this is one of the things that Ruth Bowden taught me, she said, “You can allow yourself to just sit and think, relaxing.” I usually listen to music when I’m doing this, but there are other ways to allow yourself to process and to generate ideas that will allow you to see things in a different way. You see something working the opposite way than we do here in Canada or they do it in the UK and it works, so often it’s having a fresh way of looking at things that helps me to generate great ideas.

Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?

Dr. Roger Dacre: “You have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which as you know comes from the American Constitution. I like this because it summarizes what is a right and what is something you need to go out and earn for yourself even though you should be free to do it. It’s not saying you have the right to happiness, it’s saying you have the right to try and find happiness. That summarizes how I look at life. I expect to be given the right to live my life and to be free, but I don’t expect more than that from the world. I expect to have to earn the rest from the world.

Avil Beckford: How do you define success?

Dr. Roger Dacre: Living a life that actualizes your full potential. That would be success to me, so you could be successful in any job. It just depends on your skills and other things.

Avil Beckford: In your opinion what’s the formula for success?

Dr. Roger Dacre: It’s not a secret. I think that integrity and hard work are the formula for success in any part of the world where you have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?

Dr. Roger Dacre: Attending all the lectures and going to all the things at university was an important part. I find that I learn a lot from practicing physicians, as well as books. And for my own practice of medicine, running into a problem is often a learning experience for be and can end up being a very enriching experience for me and hopefully the patient.

Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?

Dr. Roger Dacre: Start out how you mean to continue. I think you should use the same ethics and the same work practice, right from the beginning of your career and not feel that these are some things you graduate to later. When I started my practice in Cambridge, Ontario the seventh and eighth patient that came to me were drug addicts and I refused to take them on as patients. When I was telling my parents about it, they said, “Why do you have to turn anyone down at this time can’t you wait until later?” And I said, “When do you suddenly get ethics, how many patients?” And of course they couldn’t give me a number, because you either have ethics from the start or you don’t.

Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet (dad or alive), who would you choose? And what would you say to them?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I decided I was only going to choose living people.

The Queen of England: I would like to find out from her how she’s managed to work so hard and for so long and to reconcile that with her sense of self. She’s been the victim of criticism and various other things and she seems to have done this with a peacefulness that I find very admirable.

Margaret Thatcher: She is a person who has a huge conviction and she fought against much larger forces than herself and remained true to her convictions. That’s something that you can’t say about many politicians.

Nelson Mandela: When he came to power he could have been filled of hatred, anger and negativity and he showed us how living a positive life and forgiving people is beneficial to the victims and perpetrators.

Bill Bryson: He is a writer. He manages to inject such a fascination into so many facets of life

Richard Dawkins: He is a scientist who has written many books for people who are non-scientists. I admire him for looking for simplicity in complex situations because I think in the end it’s the simplicity that impresses me rather than the complexity.

Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?

Dr. Roger Dacre: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand was probably the most profound book that I read and I think it’s about believing in yourself and your work, and that this is a legitimate way to live your life.

Avil Beckford: If you were stranded on a deserted island, what are five books that you would like to have with you and why? Summarize the book in two sentences.

Dr. Roger Dacre:

1. The first of the books would be The Fountainhead for the reason I’ve just given.
2. I’d also like to have Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand which is all about not allowing yourself to be used by other people for ends rather than your own. I think that’s a useful idea to have.
3. There is another book, The Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson which I really enjoyed.

Avil Beckford: What one music CD and movie would you like to have with you (on the deserted island) and why?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I’d like to have Elton John’s Greatest Hits because they have always spoken to me. He was starting his fame when I was a teenager and he has continued to produce music all through my life so far and I have enjoyed almost all of his music.

I didn’t bring as many books because I wanted to bring more movies. I like the movie Brief Encounter, which is a movie about an unconsummated love affair, the longing of love that’s not consummated. It’s just one of those things that always spoke to me. I love the movie A Man for all Seasons which is about a principled man who loses his life because he wouldn’t become corrupt. I would also take Lion in Winter, which is another movie about someone who is brave in the face of almost certain defeat. And I would take two gay-themed movies. One is called Beautiful Thing which is about a young boy who discovers he is gay and how his mother does not reject him, and the final one is The Wedding Banquet which is actually a Chinese movie and again it’s about parents who are accepting of their gay son even though he didn’t have the courage to tell them about it. It’s an amusing yet telling story.

If you cannot view Elton John’s Greatest YouTube video click here.

Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?

Dr. Roger Dacre: New experiences shared with friends. New experiences in new countries. New experiences in the theatre. New experiences in a restaurant, that sort of thing excites me about life.

Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I like music, I love beautiful places, and I enjoy the love of my partner and friends.

Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?

Dr. Roger Dacre: I’d wish for great personal, physical and mental health.

Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..

Dr. Roger Dacre: In the company of friends and family enjoying a shared experience. I’m happiest at work when I’m efficacious.

How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let’s keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below. Many readers read this blog from other sites, so why don’t you pop over to The Invisible Mentor and subscribe (top on the right hand side) by email or RSS Feed.

Book links are affiliate links.

Ted Nicholas, a very successful entrepreneur and copywriter, has always stressed the importance of continuous learning. Recently in his ezine, The Success Margin, he shared “21 Books I’ve Read That Changed My Life.” I would like to share his list with you. Mr. Nicholas also considered these 21 books to be his life mentors. I was ecstatic when he referred to the books as his mentors.

1. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
2. Man’s Search for Meaning – Viktor Frankl
3. A new constitution for a new country – Michael Oliver
4. Think and Grow Rich – Napoleon Hill
5. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff- Richard Carlson
6. Foreign Tax Havens – Marshall Langer
7. Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics – Harry Hazlitt
8. A Tale of Two Cities: 150th Anniversary (Signet Classics) – Charles Dickens
9. How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World: A Handbook for Personal Liberty – Harry Browne
10. The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie and The Gospel of Wealth (Signet Classics) – Andrew Carnegie
11. An Intimate Story of Milton S. Hershey- Joseph Richard Snavely
12. The Wanamaker Diary – John Wannamaker
13. Five and Ten the Fabulous Life of F. W. Woolworth – John K Winkler
14. The Alger Series – Horatio Alger, Jr. (There are many books in the series)
15. Scientific Advertising – Claude C. Hopkins
16. Confessions of an Advertising Man – David Ogilvy
17. Making Ads Pay – John Caples
18. The Robert Collier Letter Book – Robert Collier
19. How I Made $1,000,000 in Mail Order-and You Can Too!- E. Joseph Cossman
20. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
21. The Little Engine That Could – Watty Piper

I like this list because it does not contain many of the usual suspects. Think and Grow Rich is on Mr. Nicholas’ list, and is one of the books that influenced many. I’ve read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich and I’m embarrassed to say that I preferred Earl Nightingale’s summary of the book. There you have it, I’ve wanted to get that off my chest for a very long time. I have read about five of the books listed and another five are on my list to read. I am always fascinated to see the kinds of books that influence highly accomplished individuals.

How many of the 21 books have you read, and what are your thoughts? What would your 21 books be? I had prepared a list of 15 books for my Facebook wall. I will add to that list and let you know what my 21 books are.

Please keep the information flowing, please provide comments.

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