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Alexander observes that the widely publicized 'Atomic Age' cannot arrive until atomic energy is used for constructive purposes in medicine and industry. He expresses certain doubts as to whether we shall ever enter such an era, the essential prerequisite of which is a profound psychological change in man's attitude toward himself, toward his fellow man and toward his world. Hovering as we are on the brink of another war, there may be too little time in which to effect the drastic changes necessary for more rational behavior. Man's irrational motivations are essentially unchanged since the days when his behavior was more obviously determined by blind emotional forces, when his capacity to ignore reason led him to destroy his fellow man with bow and arrow instead of a chain reaction or biological warfare. Alexander eloquently reaffirms our 'cultural lag': the pathological 'preoccupation with the material prerequisites of civilization'. While the world as a whole is still in desperate need of material things, we have failed tragically to 'use the energies freed by technology for constructive purposes … to educate our youth not only for the production and distribution of goods but also for the higher expression of cultural life, for science, and art, and all those services that make for the art of living'. Alexander foresees an increasing disparity and incongruity between ideology and economy,