Tweet
Book Link Here
A man who changes his way of life, or rather his profession (for life and profession are synonymous to him), is considered unreliable. If he does it more than once, he becomes a social outcast and remains alone.
The fear of being rejected by society must be considerable. Why else will a doctor (who as a child liked to observe tadpoles in jam jars) spend his life opening up nauseating growths, examining and pronouncing on human excretions? Why else does he busy himself night and day with people of such repulsiveness that everyone else is driven away? Does a pianist who, as a child, liked to tinkle on the piano really enjoy playing the same Chopin nocturne over and over again all his life? Why else does a politician who as a schoolboy discovered the techniques of manipulating people successfully continue as an adult, mouthing words and phrases as a minor government functionary? Does he actually enjoy contorting his face and playing thefool and listening to the idiotic chatter of other politicians? Surely he must once have dreamed of a different kind of life. Even if he became President of the United States, wouldn't the price be too high?
No, one can hardly assume men do all this for pleasure and without feeling a desire for change. They do it because they have been manipulated into doing it: their whole life is nothing but a series of conditioned reflexes, a series of animal acts. A man who is no longer able to perform these acts, whose earning capacity is lessened, is considered a failure. He stands to lose everything - wife, family, home, his whole purpose in life - all the things, in fact, which give him security. Of course one might say that a man who has lost his capacity for earning money is automatically freed from his burden and should be glad about this happy ending - but freedom is the last thing he wants. He functions, as we shall see, according to the principle of pleasure in non freedom. To be sentenced to life-long freedom is a worse fate than life-long slavery.
The fear of being rejected by society must be considerable. Why else will a doctor (who as a child liked to observe tadpoles in jam jars) spend his life opening up nauseating growths, examining and pronouncing on human excretions? Why else does he busy himself night and day with people of such repulsiveness that everyone else is driven away? Does a pianist who, as a child, liked to tinkle on the piano really enjoy playing the same Chopin nocturne over and over again all his life? Why else does a politician who as a schoolboy discovered the techniques of manipulating people successfully continue as an adult, mouthing words and phrases as a minor government functionary? Does he actually enjoy contorting his face and playing thefool and listening to the idiotic chatter of other politicians? Surely he must once have dreamed of a different kind of life. Even if he became President of the United States, wouldn't the price be too high?
No, one can hardly assume men do all this for pleasure and without feeling a desire for change. They do it because they have been manipulated into doing it: their whole life is nothing but a series of conditioned reflexes, a series of animal acts. A man who is no longer able to perform these acts, whose earning capacity is lessened, is considered a failure. He stands to lose everything - wife, family, home, his whole purpose in life - all the things, in fact, which give him security. Of course one might say that a man who has lost his capacity for earning money is automatically freed from his burden and should be glad about this happy ending - but freedom is the last thing he wants. He functions, as we shall see, according to the principle of pleasure in non freedom. To be sentenced to life-long freedom is a worse fate than life-long slavery.