In Atlas Shrugged, withdrawing one’s sanction was removing one’s consent to servitude. It manifested in the story as the Strike that I think most outcast intellectuals have dreamed of on their own at one point or another, only on a grand enough scale to actually work.

I’ve been playing with the concept myself recently – becoming far more forceful than usual when finding myself in a situation where others rely on me but refuse to acknowledge me, up to threatening to end my service towards them.

And it has been working. I think that, deep down, many of those who wish to run my life realize that they need me more than I need them. I’ve planned so many contingencies throughout my life and have learned so many things that I have become irrepressible by this point. Close one door and I’ll charge full steam ahead through another.

They, on the other hand, have devoted all of their lives to a particular path, on which I am now a crucial node.

I don’t begrudge them this. But I will not bow down to their rule any more than I would ask them to bow to mine.