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docs/blog/posts/2025/atlas-shrugged.md

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+---
+date: 2025-01-18
+categories:
+  - philosophy
+---
+
+# The Exploiters and The Exploited
+
+## Atlas Shrugged - Chapter VII (excerpt)
+
+A wedge of light fell across her face. He saw the firm, sensual mouth in sharp outline. Then she leaned
+back a little, and he saw only a suggestion of its shape and the dark lines of her lowered lashes.
+
+*Haven't I?*—he thought. *Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of
+nothing else for two years?* . . . He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never
+allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never
+letting them be said within his own mind. Now it was as sudden and shocking as if he were saying it to
+her. . . . *Since the first time I saw you . . . Nothing but your body, that mouth of yours, and the way your
+eyes would look at me, if . . . Through every sentence I ever said to you, through every conference you
+thought so safe, through the importance of all the issues we discussed . . . You trusted me, didn't you? To
+recognize your greatness? To think of you as you deserved—as if you were a man?*
+
+*. . . Don't you suppose I know how much I've betrayed? The only bright encounter of my life—the only
+person I respected—the best businessman I know—my ally—my partner in a desperate battle . . .*
+
+*The lowest of all desires—as my answer to the highest I've met . . .*
+
+*Do you know what I am? I thought of it, because it should have been unthinkable. For that degrading
+need, which should never touch you, I have never wanted anyone but you . . . I hadn't known what it was
+like, to want it, until I saw you for the first time. I had thought: Not I, I couldn't be broken by it . . . Since
+then . . . for two years . . . with not a moment's respite . . . Do you know what it's like, to want it? Would
+you wish to hear what I thought when I looked at you . . . when I lay awake at night . . . when I heard
+your voice over a telephone wire . . . when I worked, but could not drive it away?*
+
+*. . . To bring you down to things you can't conceive—and to know that it's I who have done it. To
+reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it,
+to see your wonderful spirit dependent upon the obscenity of your need. To watch you as you are, as
+you face the world with your clean, proud strength—then to see you, in my bed, submitting to any
+infamous whim I may devise, to any act which I'll perform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor
+and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation . . . I want you—and may I be
+damned for it! . . .*
+
+She was reading the papers, leaning back in the darkness—he saw the reflection of the fire touching her
+hair, moving to her shoulder, down her arm, to the naked skin of her wrist.
+
+*. . . Do you know what I'm thinking now, in this moment? . . .*
+
+*Your gray suit and your open collar . . . you look so young, so austere, so sure of yourself . . . What
+would you be like if I knocked your head back, if I threw you down in that formal suit of yours, if I raised
+your skirt—*
+
+She glanced up at him. He looked down at the papers on his desk.
+
+---