This morning, I had an easy, flat 8 mile run planned.

So much for plans - as I was running south on the WestWorld trail, I saw the Taliesen trail heading uphill, and the guide paper said that it was "easy", so I started trotting up that way.

In additino to "easy", the map said that it only had a couple of hundred feet of elevation change. My legs and my GPS beg to differ - it was more like 600 feet, total. But I'm not bitter, nor am I petty - and I could have turned around at any time.

The problem was that, when I got to the top of the Taliesen Trail, it was only a short bit more to get to the Taliesen Overlook. Now, I've recently reread Dan Simmons' Hyperion and Endymion books, and Frank Lloyd Wright figures in those books - in addition, I watched The Fountainhead last night, so the whole modern architecture movement was sorta fresh in my head.

So I figured that I'd trot on up to the Taliesen Overlook.

Now, if you're like me (and you must be something like me, or you wouldn't be reading this) and you were running in the mountains east of Scottsdale on the Taliesen Trail, and put in the extra effort to run up to the Taliesen Overlook, you're probably going to expect to, you know - overlook Taliesen.

But no such luck.


                           

It's definitely an overlook, but there's no dang Taliesen.

There are nice views all the way across the Valley of the Sun, and you can see some pretty dang expensive real estate right below you, but the only Frank Lloyd Wright-ness that you can see is FLW Boulevard, and you have to infer where that is by how the buildings line up.

And the extra mileage turned my 8 into 10, and turned my flat run into hills, and extended it out to that "near 100 F" period of the morning. It was bad enough that I didn't even lift afterwards - just stretched, showered and went to work.

Speaking of The Fountainhead - I never finished the book. Now, I've read Atlas Shrugged a couple of times, but The Fountainhead just wasn't realistic to my viewpoints - Dominique Francon's intentional avoidance of everything that she likes because she didn't want to like anything is just too foreign to my way of thinking.

However, I have no trouble with most of Ayn Rand's Objectivist notions - at least, none with the implentation; but I have a lot of trouble with her notions about selfishness in general. Ms. Rand speaks strongly about personal responsibility and personal freedom, and I have no disagreement nor take any issue with any of her notions along those lines - however, she dismisses altruism as being an unworthy motive, and thinks that selfishness rules all.

After many years of - on and off - thought about this dichotomy, I've come to believe that personal freedom and personal responsibility go hand in hand, and that they are essential parts of any society based on liberty and dignity. However, altruism doesn't debase such a society - it enhances it. Altruism isn't a drag on such a society, but is the highest good that the individual can attain, as long as he maintains his own responsibilities.

But to have altruism forced on anyone costs the integrity of both the enforcer and the victim - it's not altruism if it's an obligation.

I have a strong suspicion that Ms. Rand has never been in a situation that required altruism on her part to solve her own problems; those of us who have been steamrolled by our own selfishness know what I'm talking about here, and those who haven't, can never understand it.

Since John Galt is a fictional character, we can't know what would have happened to him had he contracted (say) alcoholism; a belief that a fellow like JG couldn't contract alcoholism means that one might understand John Galt, but one doesn't understand alcoholism.

So one answer to the question "Who is John Galt " would be "Well, he's not John G." : )