the.fountainhead.

What do you choose?

collectivism : individualism
dependence : independence
second handler : creator
parasite : self-thinker
selflessness : ego
compromise : integrity
acceptance : self-worth

Just some of the age-old questions raised in The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
The eye-rolling gave way to intense self-scrutiny once belief had been suspended.

One great man against the whole entire world? Live for yourself and not for others. Expect nothing and give nothing in return. Genius always meets with hatred, mediocrity with fanfare. Altruism begets bloodshed; egotism, achievement. Pity is not a virtue- it is refusing someone his right to self-esteem. Charity is evil because it thrives on the suffering of others. A man who is selfish adheres to the highest and purest standards of integrity, upholding the thought process and his creation, over and above adulation from the masses. A man who is selfless flatters others and compromises standards in order to gain acceptance. Selflessness is what altruism preaches; servitude to the masses, essentially a denouncement of the self; an embracement of spineless parasitical unthinking creatures.

Is civilisation really the saving of man from men? That one lives most sincerely when one is alone, acutely aware of the self? That civilisation attempts to give back to man the privacy and freedom of self-thought, as opposed to subjecting one to the market forces of primacy, dictated by the collective need for survival?

Architecture. Howard Roark. Me.
Food for thought indeed.