In this 1969 lecture delivered at Boston’s Ford Hall Forum, Ayn Rand contrasts two prominent events from that summer’s news: the Apollo 11 moon landing and the Woodstock music festival. Using the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus as symbols of “the fundamental conflict of our age” — reason versus irrational emotion — Rand explores the mindsets of participants, commentators and spectators in search of the two events’ philosophical causes and meaning.
In the Q&A session following the lecture, Rand expands on the subject matter of the lecture and also addresses such topics as the legalization of marijuana and other drugs, the “space race” and reasons for going to the moon, the morality of the Vietnam War and the war’s protesters, Rand’s view of her purpose in life, and government controls on pollution.
