A new world is not made simply by trying to forget the old. A new world is made with a new spirit, with new values. Our world may have begun that way, but to day it is caricatural. Our world is a world of things. It is made up of comforts and luxuries, or else the desire for them. What we dread most, in facing the impending debacle, is that we shall be obliged to give up our gew-gaws, our gadgets, and all the little comforts, which have made us so uncomfortable. There is nothing brave, chivalrous, heroic or magnanimous about our attitude. We are not peaceful souls; we are smug, timid, queasy and quaky.
…What I am getting round to is this, - though I am a born American, though I became what is called an expatriate, I look upon the world not as a partisan of this country or that but as an inhabitant of the globe. That I happened to be born here is no reason why the American way of life should seem the best; that I chose to live in Paris is no reason why I should pay with my life for the errors of the French politicians. To be a victim of the other fellow’s mistakes as well is too much…
…. We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty loving, free of prejudices and hatred. This is the melting pot, the seat of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspapermen, religious quacks, and agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot, which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all our striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and homeless; there is no room in this great, empty land for those who, like our forefathers before us, now seek a place of refuge. Millions of men and women are, or were until very recently, on relief, condemned like guinea pigs to a life of forced idleness. The world meanwhile looks to us with desperation such, as it has never known before. Where is the democratic spirit? Where are the leaders?
To conduct a great human experiment we must first of all have men. Behind the conception MAN there must be grandeur. No political party is capable of ushering in the Kingdom of Man. The workers of the world may one day, if they cease listening to their bigoted leaders, organize a brotherhood of man. But men cannot be brothers without first becoming peers, that is, equals in a kingly sense. What prevents men from uniting as brothers is their own base inadequacy. Slaves cannot unite; cowards cannot unite; the ignorant cannot unite. It is only by obeying our highest impulses that we can unite. The urge to surpass oneself has to be instinctive, not theoretical or believable merely. Unless we make the effort to realize the truths, which are in us, we shall fail again and again. As Democrats, Republicans, Fascists, Communists, we are all on one level. That is one of the reasons why we wage war so beautifully. We defend with our lives the petty principles, which divide us. The common principle, which is the establishment of the empire of man on earth, we never lift a finger to defend. We are frightened of any urge, which would lift us out of the muck. We fight only for the status quos, our particular status quos. We battle with heads down and eyes closed. Actually there never is a status quos, except in the minds of political imbeciles. All is flux. Those who are on the defensive are fighting phantoms.
What is the greatest treason? To question what it is one may be fighting for. Here insanity and treason join hands. War is a form of insanity – the noblest or the basest, according to your point of view. Because it is a mass insanity the wise are powerless to prevail against it. Above any other single factor that may be adduced in explanation of war is confusion. When all other weapons fail, one resorts to force. But there may be nothing wrong with the weapons, which we so easily and readily discard. They may need to be sharpened or we may need to improve our skill, or both. To fight is to admit that one is confused; it is an act of desperation. Not of strength. A rat can fight magnificently when it is cornered. Are we to emulate the rat?
To know peace man has to experience conflict. He has to go through the heroic stage before he can act as a sage. He has to be a victim of his passions before he can rise above them. To arouse man’s passionate nature, to hand him over to the devil and put him to the supreme test, there has to be a conflict involving something more than country, political principles, ideologies, etc. Man in revolt against his own cloying nature – that is real war. And that is a bloodless war, which goes on forever, under the peaceful name of evolution. In this war man ranges himself once and for all on the side of the angels. Though he may, as individual, be defeated, he can be certain of the outcome – because the whole universe is with him.
These are experiments, which are made with cunning and precision, because the outcome is divined beforehand. The scientist for example always sets himself soluble problems. But man’s experiment is not of this order. The answer to the grand experiment is in the heart; we inhabit a mental world, a labyrinth in whose dark recesses a monster waits to devour us. Thus far we have been moving in mythological dream sequence, finding no solutions because we are posing the wrong questions. We find only what we look for, and we are looking in the wrong place. We have to come out of the darkness, abandon these explorations, which are only flights of fear. We have to cease groping on all fours. We have to come out in the open, erect, and fully exposed.
…. As to whether I have been deceived, disillusioned… the answer is yes, I suppose. I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of great Americans – the poets and seers. Some other breed of man has won out. This world, which is in the making, fills me with dread. I have seen it germinate; I can read it like a blue – print. It is not a world I want to live in. It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress - but a false progress, a progress, which stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non – utilitarian has no place in this world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist and escapist, the man of vision, a criminal.
Exceprts from the
Introduction to The Air – Conditioned Nightmare
By Henry Miller