Attraction

Following is an extract from Atlas Shrugged– the book I am reading right now, by Ayn Rand (yes, the Fountainhead Ayn Rand!). I won’t trivialise it by trying to explain it. Just read.

“A man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions…who a man finds sexually attractive  can tell his entire philosophy. Who a man sleeps with can tell his valuation of himself. No matter what corruption he’s taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act he cannot perform for any motive but his own enjoyment…It is an act that forces him to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and to accept his real ego as standard of value. He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience- or to fake- a sense of self-esteem. The man who is profoundly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer- because only the possession of heroine will give him the sense of achievement, not the possession of brainless slut. He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But, the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises- because she will reflect his own self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him.”

And thats that! There are more extracts from this and other books to come.