Atlas Shrugged Rewritten
Within the classic story of Atlas Shrugged is contained a fictional response of what happens when the body of an organization becomes riddled with cancerous cells and the mind responds with more and more authoritarian control. In this story, the despairing heart and the creative class run and hide in a heavenly high-tech mountain hideout. The glorification of Ayn Rand’s heroes’ self-serving, self-righteous escape to encourage the system to collapse is as polluted as her personal life’s story, Objectivism aside. It is tempting to use division to wall our hearts off from our human design to find reconciliation and avoid a fight. It is always a failure to run and hide with no plan of reconciliation or return.
Western Civilization, when paired with true Christianity, was the perfected spiritual warrior that conquered the world by internal reconciliation with all three centers organized into a zero point that swept away the old world in its path. The Romans, the Mongols, the Mohammedans, and the Colonialists, as the most reconciled organizations of humanity, were the disease and the cure to force a new age of man on Earth. We have all taken our turn. The philosophy of Atlas Shrugged was a mortal wound to the reconciled tornado that was Western Civilization at the height of its power. That’s how the Devil works.
A retreat into the mountains is a metaphor for going into your own zero point. It can be, but not in this story of escape. In Atlas Shrugged, the mind in judgment and the body in fear led the heart into hopelessness and self-righteousness. There was never a plan to restore internal harmony and strength just a plan for collapse and then what? Perhaps a repeated feeding on the wounded carcass or an easy reorganization of lost souls filled with shame.
I am not judging the history of Western Civilization. As a budding doctor of civilization, my purpose in this post is to ask myself and my reader the same questions every doctor faces. What is the disease? Can I save my patient? Does my patient want to live? Is the patient’s soul pulling the plug from the inside? Let us assume since this heart affliction showed up at a high state of reconciled health our patient, Western Civilization was simply being tested by the natural forces any tornado or hurricane meet. The disturbance of the zero point by fixed topography and structures must always be met with a greater reconciliation. Rich food takes the strongest enzymes to digest.
A founding ethos’ role in maintaining internal reconciliation, when faced with the same conditions faced in Atlas Shrugged, is to apply the immune system early and often. Each organizing civilization makes an implicit deal with every alien force it encounters. “Join us, we have a better deal or die. The Romans said my elites are wiser, better organized, and more benevolent than your local elites. The Mohammedans said my God gives certainty, a worshipful community, and drives away superstition. The Colonialists brought guns, drugs, spices, and cross-pollination of our species.
The Devil may have led the way, especially for the Mongols, but after the conquest, the immune system settled down and became more refined to support the internal harmony of the reconciled core. Without a reconciled elite, supported by a ruthless self-inspection and self-policing of the core deal you are offering humanity, it will fracture from the inside first. The book Atlas Shrugged pre-viewed our world-breaking post-Kennedy assassination.
John Kennedy was a master reconciler that carried all the wounds of his people and yet always led with his heart. The anti-communist message of fear so well crafted by Ayn Rand helped to fracture the consensus. Fear and division within seeped into the American immune system and caused an auto-immune response that killed the greatest source of fear, a president willing to surrender both power and control for peace. What replaced the reconciled center embodied by Kennedy became the divided Johnson Administration driven by fear and shame into external war and the internal sugar high of social engineering via government programs. Reagan, Clinton, and Trump gave us a few harmonic glimpses of our previously reconciled state but all three were mercilessly attacked and regularly crucified.
Who or what attacked our chosen reconcilers? The same forces described in Atlas Shrugged. A lazy, dependent population waiting for their next savior and a warring elite. One side of the elite wants to invade any and all crevices to enhance power and control while the other wants to cut and run with as much wealth as they can gather. Here we stand again. A tale as old as time. Hope is pulled down bit by bit into hopelessness until utter hopelessness inspires hopeful change. What if we pull back the curtain and see what drives this cycle? Can we apply a remedy to soften the amplitude of swinging between exaltation and despair?
First, we must settle our war among our elites. The drive for power that has corrupted money and the free flow of energy versus the drive for control that has corrupted science into inhuman agendas of technocracy and trans-humanism. Both camps must be pulled back into the center ring of the heart for combat. We, the people, should have pulled the plug on the fractured mind of our civilization after the assassinations of our heart heroes in the sixties. We tried. We killed the draft and now have a professional military inspired by career and service to power and money. We got high on drugs and made love with everyone and now we are slaves to big pharma and sexuality is invading our youngest children.
We fought isolated battles and lost the war. Our mind and our government have found balance by both sides of the elite agreeing to rape and pillage what is left of our culture. We cannot outsmart the mind, but we can pull the plug. All we, the people, have to do is put our mind and our leaders to sleep for a good night’s rest and its journey to the heart. We, who supply all the energy to the mind must gently, with a firm and loving embrace hold the warring sides of our mind into the wholeness of the zero point at the center of our heart.
Tune in for a people’s strategy session next time.