Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" and John Galt: a modern-day Lucifer, or Satan in disguise?

In "Atlas Shrugged", the character John Galt dominates the third part of the story (Book Three). It is Galt who has been responsible for persuading the "best and brightest" to join him in his "New Atlantis", in a remote valley, where these people can live their lives according to their own efforts, without involvement of government.

As said in my earliest articles on this subject, biblical symbolism runs a deep vein through the novel: in its scope and ambition, "Atlas Shrugged" could well be called the most influential piece of fiction of the 20th century. This is the "Fall From Heaven" of the beginning of the Old Testament, but seen from the perspective of Satan/ Lucifer.

Furthermore, in the same way that Satan and his allies are banished to live their own form of existence in Hell, Rand has Galt and his followers living their "pure" form of life from complete scratch, with nothing from their successful and rich lifestyle of the outside world. In the remote valley these "exiles" live in, all their efforts are made by their own hand alone. They build their own houses themselves; they live simply (at least, appear to). From a psychological point of view, they have sacrificed their materialistic ego (i.e. their riches in the outside world) for the sake of a moral ego (i.e. the pride they have in doing things by their own efforts and in their own way). In "Atlas Shrugged", these "best and brightest" have made the ultimate material sacrifice in order to live true to their ideas; it could be argued that Satan and his followers were made to make the pay the same price by God when they were banished from Heaven.

John Galt is the mouthpiece of Rand's philosophy, spelled out in various ways in the novel. Galt explains Rand's own thinking on morality and the nature of government: Galt has stopped "the motor of the world" by taking away the "best and brightest" in society. In other words, Galt simply equates wealth with talent and effort; you cannot have the former without the latter. This is the basic premise of the novel, stripped of its baubles and fancy rhetoric. All those in his "New Atlantis" are rich because they are clever and/or hardworking. People are poor, therefore, because they are stupid and/ or lazy. It is as simple as that.
His moral objection to life in the outside world, where government controls much of day-to-day life, is that he refuses to live in a society where he sees the clever having to work for the sake of the stupid, and the hardworking for the sake of the lazy.

Galt's own vow is that he swears to "never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine". In Galt's eyes, this is the only moral way for a man to live: by his efforts alone.

Light-bringer or destroyer?

This philosophy as hardly anything new, as George Monbiot explains. The question is: whose philosophy is it? Blaming poverty on the poor has a long history, most recently expounded by George Osborne with his "strivers versus skivers" rhetoric. It goes down well because, like all successful ideas, it is easy to explain - regardless of the reality.

According to Christian belief  "the meek shall inherit the earth". According to Galt, it is the strong who shall inherit the earth. If Galt and his followers represent the "best and brightest", then "government" must seemingly represent the opposite - the worst and the weakest. What Galt finds offensive (i.e. immoral) is the strong being obliged to support the weak. Underpinning the tenets of Rand's philosophy - Objectivism - is the idea of social Darwinism. Society can only progress if its weakest elements are allowed to die. Accordingly, in a society where everyone is responsible for his own efforts, it is natural that the weakest specimens of society will not succeed. When neo-liberals and Conservatives talk about how "inequality is good", this is what they mean; they see it as being "natural".

So who is John Galt then, really? What does he represent?
My previous article on this subject mentioned "Luciferianism", and the role that some see Lucifer (Satan's name before The Fall) having in promoting the pursuit of objective knowledge. Lucifer is the "light-giver", whose gift is to free man from the shackles of God's narrow doctrine. Seen in this way, Lucifer's role is to test and push mankind on to better things; a kind of "disciplinarian teacher" for humanity. This seems to be the role that Galt is playing in "Atlas Shrugged", punishing society - robbing it for its "best and brightest" -  for the sake of itself. This theme, and further biblical references, are continued in the second article about the role of John Galt here.

Perception is one thing; the reality is another. Rand may seem inequality as "just", but that does not make the world "just". Those nations with the highest levels of inequality are not the most successful ones in the world; on the contrary, all the evidence suggests that nations with low levels of inequality (e.g. in Scandinavia) are those with the highest levels of development.
John Galt may be an idol for the neo-liberal scene, and people like the "TEA Party", but Galt represents a philosophy that ridicules the concept of empathy. And we all know what a society without empathy can be capable of.

On the one hand, Galt seemingly symbolises the "best" in humanity - its pursuit of knowledge and excellence, and its individualist spirit. But on the other, Galt symbolizes the very destruction of the concept of "humanity" - by destroying the very concept of human empathy, teaching it as something immoral and obscene.

In this way, "John Galt" may well be termed as a new, modern form of the Trickster: the "serpent" that encouraged Adam and Eve to eat the Forbidden Fruit, and then suffered God's wrath.

It is in Galt's "manifesto", discussing in detail the symbolism of the Fall Of Man, that reaches the crux of Ayn Rand's philosophy, and the real meaning of her work.

Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged": morality, Christianity and Lucifer

In a recent article the author went into some detail about the biblical symbolism evident in the story of "Atlas Shrugged". It is ironic that Ayn Rand's seminal masterpiece - given that she was a profound atheist -  is so full of Christian imagery. But her work on this great novel displays the contempt she had for the "conventional morality" of the day, when "Atlas Shrugged" was published in the 1950s, with the novel acting as a philosophical marker for a different form of morality, which she called Objectivism.

As argued in my previous article on this subject, Rand's morality tale bears some strong similarities to a retelling of the story of Satan's fall from heaven in the Old Testament - but crucially, with the moral perspective reversed. As Atlas Shrugged is about industrial "heroes" fleeing the constraints of government,  a "revision" of the Fall From Heaven sees Satan and his followers lose their battle with God, and decide to flee to exist independently from God's power.

I said (in jest) that Rand could be said to be a kind of "Satanist"; but more accurately, she could be called a "Luciferian". Her philosophy of extolling independence, self-love, the pursuit of knowledge and rationalism comes very close to the ideas also shared by Luciferianism. Lucifer himself represents the symbolic "Fallen Angel".
Lucifer (Satan) is seen as the symbol of the pursuit of ultimate knowledge and personal growth. More exactly, this is the name given to Satan before "The Fall". Seemingly inspired by the pursuit of knowledge and self-advancement, he grows frustrated with God's arbitrary use of power, seeks more independence, and refuses to bow down to man, God's creation. And yet, after The Fall, in the guise of The Serpent, his temptation of Eve may better be seen as a method of trying to lift the veil from the first humans' eyes about God's intentions and deception (by eating from from the Tree Of The Knowledge Of Good and Evil the humans will be "like God"). What are Satan's motives here? By labeling Satan's motives as purely evil, this is something that Christian theology struggles to convincingly answer.

Rand's use of biblical symbolism in the novel is self-evident in some of phrasing she chooses: using words such as "hymns" to describe the ideas expressed by the heroic characters in Atlas Shrugged; the industrialists talking of themselves as "sacrificial victims"; and the pirate Ragnar Danneskjold describing himself as an "avenging angel". This is the morality of Christianity turned on its head.

The Anti-Pope

In the modern day, the current Pope, Francis, has been seen as a paragon of Christian virtue: going back to the "old values" of a "poor" church that focuses as much on social welfare as spiritual purity. Rand's philosophy stands for the exact opposite to this idea of altruism and self-sacrifice. Her morality is one based on people's value being based purely on the talents, not their "need". In her eyes, people are rich due to their own talents and efforts; likewise, people are poor for their lack of the same properties. This is not something for "society" or government to be concerned about; it is a matter of individual responsibility. In other words, "inequality" is the state of nature. Modern-day Conservatives talk of the same thing.

Pope Francis talks about ideas such as love for our fellow man; in "Atlas Shrugged", the government of the day uses the same language, while Rand twists this thinking into meaning the exact opposite: turning the rich into the victims, and the poor into looters. In Part Two, Chapter Seven of the novel, the pirate character, Ragnar Danneskjold, talks about how he is effectively a "Robin Hood" for the rich: taking back the money "stolen" from the rich by the government (on behalf of the poor) and returning it back to them. Rand also (through the character of Danneskjold) gives an astonishing attack on the "morality" of the legendary Robin Hood, damning his methods as the epitome of evil. As the pirate says:
"He is a man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights; that we don't have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became a justification for every mediocrity who, unable to make his own living, had demanded the power to dispose of the property of his betters, by proclaiming his willingness to devote his life to his inferiors at the price of robbing his superiors"

This gives a small example of the morality behind Rand, and her ability to make the counter-intuitive appear logical. To her mind, because Pope Francis wishes to "help the poor", he represents evil in human form.

Where does this leave ideas such as "love" or empathy? As said earlier, people like Pope Francis extol the idea of self-sacrifice and love for our fellow man. In Rand's morality, these ideas are anathema: "love" can only be earned. "Empathy" appears entirely absent from Rand's value system.

A "psychopathic" morality?

"Empathy" is generally understood to be the ability to recognise how someone else feels emotionally, and being able to respond to this appropriately. In the field of psychology, psychopaths (who represent around 1% of the overall population) are distinguishable for their absence of human empathy. Because of their lack of empathy, they cannot understand or react to, for example, human suffering. This results in their being capable of extremely callous and cold-hearted behaviour.

Going back to the example of Satan, it could be argued that descriptions of his actions in Christian literature mark him as being one of the prime examples of a psychopathic character in scripture. What many consider "evil" could likewise be called "psychopathic". While the terms can never be exactly interchangeable, it is true that psychopathy is responsible for a great deal of crime and social ills.

With this in mind, Ayn Rand's philosophy has been held to blame for the neo-liberal economic model that has ruled much of the world for the past thirty years. It is this system that has resulted in a widening gap between rich and poor, the re-shaping of the global economy, as well as being responsible for the conditions that caused the financial crisis of 2008, which many people even now are still feeling the after-effects of, seven years later.

The moral system that underpins the economic system of today's world was written by Ayn Rand. For this reason, it could well be said that "Atlas Shrugged" was the most influential - and dangerous - novel of the 20th century. It takes a special kind of genius to take an idea that almost everyone considers to be immoral, and transform it into the appearance of the highest virtue.
In many ways, "Atlas Shrugged" is a kind of Bible of our time. It certainly reads like one, and may well also have been responsible for causing human suffering in the same way as the Word Of God, thanks to the "Pied Piper"-like quality of the words contained in its many pages.

In "Atlas Shrugged", the "Pied Piper" role is played by the character John Galt, whose role is explored in more detail in the following article.

Westminster and First Past The Post: A British political system not fit for purpose

Westminster is a living museum, in every sense of the word. A recent piece in "The Economist" gave an accurate and thought-provoking reminder of how impractical a place the Palace Of Westminster is to deal with the day-to-day tasks of dealing with British politics in the 21st century. Built in the middle of the 19th century, no-one would disagree that the building is an architectural masterpiece. But still using it in the same way in the 21st century as we do now is like insisting on using the same clapped-out, classic car that keeps failing its MOT and you can't fit your family into simply because it was your grandfather's. As reported some time ago, the building needs urgent repair work that would probably take at least several years, resulting in parliamentary business being conducted elsewhere.

Even on a practical basis, the current arrangements are an ad hoc solution. There is not enough space in the Palace Of Westminster for MPs to work, even to fit all the current MPs into the House Of Commons. When there is an important debate, many MPs have to stand; when there is an important vote, because - as pointed out in the "Economist" article, MPs are housed in any one of three separate buildings - there is a dash to get to the chamber in time. This is ridiculous. It may look good on TV to have MPs housed in the Palace Of Westminster, but it makes no sense in reality, least of all for the MPs themselves who have to deal with these issues every day.
And this is before mentioning the antiquated procedures and "traditions" that the recent cohort of neophyte SNP MPs are  - rightly - finding an absurd distraction from the business of politics. Some of these points (and the "fighting" over where to sit in the House Of Commons) were recently mentioned in a "Question Time" debate on the BBC (in the episode's first question). The SNP is looking at the way things are done in Westminster, compared to how things are done in Holyrood, and seeing the London institution as a place trapped by its own history, unable to deal with the realities of the 21st century.

The Palace Of Westminster is a museum piece, and should be treated and preserved as one: it is not a suitable place of work for 650 MPs and staff in the 21st century. It is a museum, and should be used as one. And this is without even mentioning the electoral system....

The most unfair election in history

A recent article pointed out the fact that the election result of the last election produced a result in parliament that was the most unrepresentative (compared to how people actually voted nationally) ever.
On the one hand, the Conservatives gained a majority of the seats in parliament based on 37% of the vote. The SNP took 56 of Scotland's 59 seats in Westminster based a little over half of the vote in Scotland. The Greens, who received over a million votes (a little under 4% of the national vote) only returned one MP. And then there is UKIP, who gained 12.5% of the national vote...and also returned only one seat in parliament.

Those figures there tell you the nature of the problem: while the electoral system has for decades not been a true reflection of the political reality, resulting in distortions that favour the two biggest parties, today the system has created not so much a distortion as a perversion of how politics is meant to work. In the multi-party reality of UK politics in 2015, we have an electoral system that is loaded massively in favour of the two main parties; clearly, much more in favour of the Tories at the moment.
In short, it could be called a "fix". It is not "democracy". As the electoral system favours the party in government (currently with a majority), the party with that position has no inclination to change the system. Ergo, the party in government has a stranglehold on parliament and the electoral system that benefits itself at the expense of the other (especially, smaller) parties. Furthermore, in this parliament the constituency boundaries are due to be redrawn in a manner that will benefit the Tories, giving them a further in-built advantage. With Labour likely to be out of office for ten more years, it is difficult to say what the UK will be like after fifteen years of Conservative rule in 2025.

So the hideous irony here is that as British politics becomes the most multi-polar it has been for generations (arguably, ever), the "natural party of government" - the Tories - tilt the system in the exact opposite direction. The UK has a multi-polar political environment with a political system weighed massively in favour of one party: the Conservatives. Only in Scotland does the system produce a different result, now weighed massively in favour of the SNP.

Not fit for purpose

The author has made comments on the easily "corruptible" nature of the British political system before. The British political system has always been a "fix" of one form or another, ever since the electoral franchise was extended beyond the landed classes. It could be argued that the system worked at its best (i.e. it best reflected the political reality) in the 1950s and '60s, when Labour and the Conservatives dominated British politics.
That system began to break down in the '70s in Scotland with the rise of the SNP, and Liberals more generally. In the 1980s, the SNP/Alliance were the victims of a system that didn't give any "space" for a third national party. From the '90s onwards, their successors, the LibDems, managed a way to get over some of the hurdles in their way, while by the time Labour gained office in 1997, the next thirteen years saw the system skewed in their favour instead, up to (and including) the 2010 election.

Britain has changed, but its political system remains fundamentally the same as it was two hundred years ago. Stepping away from the House Of Commons, to the House Of Lords, we see an assembly of hand-picked individuals, aristocrats and bishops - one of the world's last remaining bastions of modern-day feudalism in the developed world. This is masked in the tones of deference to the "mother of all parliaments" and reverence for "families that have generations of experience at the highest level of the decision-making process".
But this is simply masterful misdirection; something that the establishment has been good at for centuries.

The Tories are the party of the aristocracy, and have been since the 17th century. They know how to make people want to vote for them, and when you are up against (in the words of Alastair Campbell) a set of "ruthless bastards", what can you do?

Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged" and biblical symbolism: God, Government and Satan

Ayn Rand's magnum opus, "Atlas Shrugged" was published a little under sixty years ago. At the time, the novel - and the philosophy behind its key message - was considered unfashionable and even controversial, as it went against every moral fibre of the society that existed at the time. As one of the main advocates of pure Capitalism (i.e. a society and economy effectively without government interference), Rand took the economic ideas of the "Austrian School" and created a "moral code" from them:she called this new philosophy "Objectivism". As this novel was published in the middle of the so-called "post-war consensus", her ideas took conventional morality and turned it on its head.

Rand's sense of morality - of right and wrong - is displayed and explained in stunning clarity in"Atlas Shrugged". It tells a morality tale, but one relevant to modern times and written in an accessible, highly-readable form. As a piece of literature it is a true masterpiece; a contemporary work of art. It is breathtaking, terrifying, electrifying yet dangerous. It is breathtaking in the enormous scope of vision, a piece of literature over a thousand pages long that takes in everything from big industry to the lowest poverty. It is terrifying in its description of gradual social breakdown, with its predictions of how government can easily lose sight of how society functions. It is electrifying in the manner of how morality and ideas are explained with cut-glass sharpness and a refined clarity of thought. And yet, as a piece of writing, it is also dangerous: dangerous for the great convincing intelligence shown in its pages, but also the horrible truth of what these ideas mean in the real world.

As dangerous as "The Communist Manifesto" was to society when its ideas began to put put into practice, the ideas of "Atlas Shrugged" have been as dangerous to society when implemented by governments for the past thirty-five years. Communism brought about the poverty of any society that implemented its ideas; meanwhile, trying to implement "pure" Capitalism in the last thirty years simply resulted in a complete collapse in the system. Russia after Communism was as good an example of this as any: the result was complete anarchy and a depression-style collapse in living standards. And lest we forget, it was only "government" that saved the global system from complete collapse in 2008.

For both pure Communism as preached by Karl Marx, and pure Capitalism as described by Ayn Rand, are simply dangerous - but convincing - pipedreams; opposite versions of a nightmarish dystopia.

The Word Of Rand

As said earlier, Atlas Shrugged is a morality tale. It is a document, in fictional form, of Rand's view of the world. 

In essence, the story revolves around several "heroic" characters who are people of industry. These characters (such as Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart, who dominate the first half of the story) are moral purists, who wish to make (more) money and become (more) successful, it seems simply for the sake of becoming better. Their goal is not to do things for the benefit of others (e.g. society, or their family) but doing things that further their own goals. Any positive effect that others gain from their success is incidental. Moral purity and philosophical (and psychological) strength are key attributes, as are honesty and the principle of self-reliance. As a result, these characters have little time (and respect) for those around them that do not follow those same ideas.

Rand is a fervent believer in America as "the land of the free". In her eyes, America is the nearest thing - given she was an ardent atheist - to "heaven on earth". America for Rand was a place founded on the principles of freedom and the right to self-betterment through individual struggle and excellence without government interference. In "Atlas Shrugged", these "heroic" characters gradually fall victim to efforts by the government to prevent them from fulfilling their wishes to "become better" under their own terms. A succession of government rules obstruct them and create disincentives to working as they would wish, as the government sees these industrialists as "greedy" and "anti-social". These "heroes" are forced to either accept government's many rules, or quit.

In the end, the industrialists are shown another way of doing their work, without government interference in the "New Atlantis", which they flock to, and then thrive in.

God, Government, and The Bible

Rand sees this "New Atlantis" as a society where the only rule is that of nature and "rational self-interest". Conversely, the land of "government" is one of rules that stifle the free will and betterment of individuals who seek to make their own success and fortune - in effect, because they are rivals to the exclusive power of "government".

Anyone familiar with the Old Testament, and especially the fate of Satan, might see some interesting parallels with the morality tale of Atlas Shrugged - albeit with an important twist. 

In the Bible, Satan is God's most powerful (and beautiful) angel. Satan seeks to be as powerful as God, and (according to the theologian Origen) seeks greater free will from the will of God. When God makes man in his own image, he refuses to kneel before man when God requests it. These factors result in the "war in heaven", which culminate in the ejection of Satan and his followers from Heaven and their banishment to Hell, which Satan becomes the ruler of. It is therefore only in Hell where Satan and his followers are truly "free".

Of course, the Bible goes out of its way to portray Satan as the embodiment of evil, but this is a misleading simplification, even when directly reading the Bible itself. Satan's key role in Genesis is the temptation of Eve with the apple from the Tree Of Knowledge (Of Good And Evil), which would make her and Adam "like God". Satan's other name is Lucifer, which is Latin for "light-giver", and it was this role - as the giver of "light" or knowledge - that Satan is punished for by God after the temptation of Eve. In other words, Satan's role in Genesis is to encourage the first man and woman to better themselves, while also highlighting God's arbitrary and deceitful nature.

Rand's grand morality tale, "Atlas Shrugged", could then be called a re-imagining of the tale of Satan's fall from Heaven told from the perspective of Satan rather than God. Substitute the word "God" for "Government" and Satan and his followers for the "heroic" industrialists, and the narratives are in many ways parallel, except that the sense of perspective is reversed. In the Bible, Satan and his followers are forced to leave Heaven as they refuse to follow God's (arbitrary) commands and (to their minds) twisted philosophy, and feel held back from their full potential. In "Atlas Shrugged", the "heroes" flee the control of "government" for the same reasons.

It could also be argued that God represents to Satan the same idea that "government" represents to Rand. Satan rebelled against God partly because of what he saw as God's arbitrary power, but also because Satan refused to bow before man, God's creation. In this way, Satan refused to offer man his unconditional love or respect, as he felt it was undeserved or unearned. This idea (of "conditional love" or undeserved respect or charity) also features strongly in Atlas Shrugged. For example, Hank Rearden, one of the industrial "heroes", refuses to give a job to his brother because he is unqualified and undeserving. Later, he threatens to throw his brother out of his house, rather preferring to see his brother on the street than getting charity from him for simply being part of the family. Rand's philosophy reels against the idea of charity and "brotherly love" precisely because she sees it as unearned, detrimental and pointless. Satan, given his attitude towards man, would doubtless agree: part of what Satan stands for is the opposite to the concept of Judaeo-Christian selfless, "brotherly love". Satan represents the advancement of the "self" to its moral conclusion - severing connection to "God", and the rejection of the idea of selflessness and self-sacrifice for (undeserving) others e.g. by refusing to unconditionally "love" man, or to blindly obey God's commands.

To follow "God", then, is to abandon the idea of the "self" for the benefit of the whole; this is what Satan rejects, resulting in his Fall From Heaven. Likewise, Rand's philosophy rejects the idea of "government" having the right to arbitrary power over individuals, and in her novel, Atlas Shrugged rails against this (calling those who support government's arbitrary power "looters"), and also strongly rejects the idea of (wealthy and talented) individuals sacrificing for the benefit of others who are poorer (and less talented) - the "heroic" industrialist Hank Rearden, during his trial in the novel, calls himself a "sacrificial victim". However, he refuses to accept this quietly.

Seen in this light, "Atlas Shrugged" not only turns conventional morality on its head, but its symbolism - to those knowledgeable of The Bible - makes a morality tale like the "Fall From Heaven" seem instead a "Flight From Hegemony": Satan and his followers escaping the "tyranny" of God's power and  "sacrificial" morality to establish their own "freedom" outside of Heaven. In Atlas Shrugged, the "heroic" industrialists similarly wish to escape the "tyranny" of government. So Rand could - arguably - be called a "Satanist" of a kind, looking at the evidence above.

Dangerous stuff, indeed...

(Part Two of this thread continues here)