I’m reading “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. It’s a very frightening book because is so perfectly describes the philosophical and political landscape we are in right now. Reality is a bit more subtle than what is depicted so far in the book (I’ve only read the first 200 of over a thousand) but her characters are spot-on in assuming the prevailing attitudes out there in today’s world. What’s frightening though is that it was first published in 1957.
That’s not what I want to write about here though.
What I do want to write about is a scrap of narrative that shows what one of the book’s main protagonists does when he’s faced by a crisis. Henry Rearden has developed a new, improved steel alloy and is having trouble getting it accepted in the marketplace, mostly because of behind the scenes chicanery by “connected” establishment types. He has one large order from a railroad company that needs rails in a hurry to build a line into a developing industrial area that they hope will save the company from bankruptcy. Rearden starts his day with the news that a train carrying his rails has been in a wreak, spilling its cargo. The railroad executives have told him it will be weeks before they can deliver the rails.
In the next two hours, with the assistance of his secretary, two young engineers from his shipping department, a road map and the long-distance telephone, Rearden arranged for a fleet of trucks to proceed to the scene of the wreak, and for a chain of hopper cars to meet them at the nearest station of the Atlantic Southern. The hopper cars had been borrowed from Taggart Transcontinental. The trucks had been recruited from all over New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado. Rearden’s engineer had hunted by telephone for private truck owners and had offered payments that had stopped all arguments short…
…He had attended to the matter without breaking his chain of appointments, without raising his voice, without sign of strain, uncertainty or apprehension; he had acted with the swift precision of a military commander under sudden fire…
When I read that I was impressed. I tend to not handle a crisis that way. In fact, I don’t tend to handle the normal flow of things that well, and when a crisis hits I’m more inclined to “Stop the engines!” then fuss and fluster for too long over the problem. And then I still have to get my life started up again. When I read the above, I had an epiphany: I could act like Henry Rearden too. Especially since the reason I generally handle a crisis so inefficiently is not because I don’t have an idea of what to do (I usually have a dozen ideas.) I’m just afraid I don’t have the “one truly best idea” and that if I did, I’m afraid I won’t implement it perfectly. Really it’s kind of a sorry form of pride: not being able to be less than perfect. I need to replace it with just about anything else. Even random action gives you a snowball’s chance in Hell of getting it right. Inaction just guarantees a failure.
