“The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is apt to spread discontent among those who are.”
The following metaphorical experiment involving monkeys reminds me much of a quote on Truth by Arthur Schopenhauer, especially the “violently opposed” part. The quote is:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
As for the experiment (true or not), it seems that the majority of the human race have replaced the monkeys in terms of our minds being imprisoned by those in, so-called, authority as well as the societal pressures to conform.
There is no doubt that we have all but become easily frightened and obedient monkeys, through the apparent use of the “carrot and stick” policy instigated by those who wish to coerce us into doing their bidding, whilst we violently turn on those who dare to step out the status quo. Read more…
Listen, Little Man! is a great physician’s quiet talk to each one of us, the average human being, the Little Man. Written in 1946 in answer to the gossip and defamation that plagued his remarkable career, it tells how Reich watched, at first naively, then with amazement, and finally with horror, at what the Little Man does to himself; how he suffers and rebels; how he esteems his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he gains power as a “representative of the people,” he misuses this power and makes it crueler than the power it has supplanted.
Reich has us to look honestly at ourselves and to assume responsibility for our lives and for the great untapped potential that lies in the depth of human nature.
A sobering but much needed wake-up call for the majority of walking dead that belong to the human race…
“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book(Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom(when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this(or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.”
