In the novel all the good guys have strong jaws, are beautiful and independent while the villains are weak jawed, mediocre and needy. It is much easier to make policy when choices are few; when the complexities of life have been reduced down to a black and white scenario, then the concept of good and evil eventually leads to dogmatic thought delivered through religious doctrine. Strange how closely that description fits our present situation.

Instead of Atlas holding up the world it is the exploitation of the masses which holds up Atlas; instead of Atlas shrugging, it is the people who should shrug off the yoke of the Industrial Revolution and become master over the machine. The human being is not primarily a tool maker, but rather a conceptual thinker able to articulate and communicate complex ideas.

Fifty years ago when I was a child they told us that the automation of machines would make us free, but that has not happened; instead we have become fodder for the machine—our children are chosen early in life for particular high tech jobs requiring astute minds bred from a very early age and bribed with the promise of money. Money is clearly overvalued while the uniqueness of each human being is overlooked unless it can be utilized by the machine.

For my part Atlas can take his machine and hit the road of progress leading quickly nowhere. Where Atlas is their god, progress is their religion; progress for its own sake tramples upon the God-given rights of the human being to extend creation in new and clever ways derived from higher worlds where utility is fruitless. There are places in creation where love and intellect rule instead of the base element of earth and those who cling to it.

The truth is that Atlas was not holding up the world, but rather was trying to abscond with the earth—carrying it away on his back. The deeper truth is Atlas is not even a god, but just the trumped up fantasies of people with too much money and too much power.