Listen, Little Man!

[DHodges]

In the past few days I've been readingthis book by Wilhelm Reich. In some ways, it's dated, because he is railing against the type of people that gave rise to fascism and communism (in the totalitarian sense) in the nineteen twenties and thirties. But in some ways, it is timeless, because he is talking about human nature. He is talking about the common man, the little man, the man who lives in the regular way, who goes through life without too much thought.

The little man has an interesting relationship to the man of thought, the discoverer, the 'genius'. Here are some quotes (from the Ralph Manheim translation, italics are in the original):

But if you merely kept away and refrained from helping him, the discoverer wouldn't be unhappy on your account. He does all this because he is driven by his own functional aliveness. He leaves it to the party leaders and clergymen to minster to you and take care of you and pity you. He thinks it's high time you learned to take care of yourself.

But you don't content yourself with not helping; you harass him and spit at him.
...
Happiness wants to be worked for and earned. But you merely want to consume happiness. It runs away because it doesn't want to be consumed by you.
...
In the meantime, the discoverer has managed to convince a good many people that his discovery has practical value, that if offers a possibility of understanding certain psychic disorders, or of lifting a weight, or blasting rock, or healing tumors, or seeing through opaque matter with the help of rays. You don't believe it until you see it in the paper, because you don't trust your own eyes and intelligence. When the discovery appears in the papers, you come running. Suddenly, the discoverer, whom only a short while before you were denigrating as a charlatan, pornographer, faker, and menace to public morality, becomes a "genius". You don't know what a genius is, little man. Any more than you know what a "Jew" or "truth" is.
...
Genius is the trade mark you paste on your products when you put them up for sale. If the discoverer (who only a little while ago was a "sex fiend" or a "psychotic") turns out to be a "genius", you will be in more of a hurry to consume the happiness he has brought into the world. In fact, you will gobble it up, because millions of little men will come out and shout "Genius, genius" in chorus with you.
...
You do nothing to develop the great discovery in the right direction. You take it over mechanically, heedlessly, greedily, stupidly. You fail to see its possibilities or limits. You are too short on feeling for life to see the possibilities and at the same time you overstep the limits.
...
I know, I know, you want your "geniuses" and you're ready to honor them. But you want nice geniuses, well-behaved, moderate geniuses with no nonsense about them, and not the untamed variety who break through al barriers and limitations. You want a limited, cropped and clipped genius you can parade through the streets of your cities without embarrassment.
...
I don't say this to scoff at you, I say it because I'm your friend, even if you tend to kill your friends when they tell you the truth.

[bert]

Is this not the kind of guy who screams "I have seen it all"?But what they usually mean is this:they consumed their ,by "accident",small unities and frustrations.

[MKFaizi]

I read Reich thirty years ago. He made some sense to me then. But that was thirty years ago.

His thought does not hold up to other things that I read thirty or forty years ago.

Faizi

[DHodges]

I read Reich thirty years ago. He made some sense to me then. But that was thirty years ago.

I mostly agree. There were some good bits in there, but overall it was dated. He has some good points, but they are not points you won't find elsewhere.

And there is a lot of ranting about how he's been oppressed, or suppressed, or something.

Furthermore, his solution for everything seems to be: Love. The little man's problem, he thinks, is that he is incapable of True Love, having suppressed his true emotions etc.

That may have been a brave, bold thing to say at the time, but today it comes across like something an old hippie would say; kind of cliched and trite, and a bit naive.

[Pye]

I once heard some incredible things about Reich's therapy technique, apparently caught on some old films (this person I was talking to had seen). Reich would be down on the floor with these people, aggressively massaging and working upon the area of the body in which he had determined the patient's problem to be stuck. He had some sort of chakra-like system in mind, clearly supporting the massage-mantra that "the issue's in the tissue."

He'd be working and working on them, really crazy-like, with the results that -- if he was in the "right" area -- these people would go into these heaving catharses, raising wails from the very depths of them (assumed not to be from the aggressive handling itself), ejecting all the collected woe and (apparently) being able to move forth from there, "changed." Crazy stuff, said the person who saw it; crazy but nevertheless compelling.

[propellerbeanie]

Reich
reminds me of what a revolutionary once told me. Those who are the least likely to call social or economic revolutions good are the first to advertize houshold cleaning products with the word.

[hsandman]

I read Reich thirty years ago. He made some sense to me then. But that was thirty years ago.

I mostly agree. There were some good bits in there, but overall it was dated. He has some good points, but they are not points you won't find elsewhere.

And there is a lot of ranting about how he's been oppressed, or suppressed, or something.

Furthermore, his solution for everything seems to be: Love. The little man's problem, he thinks, is that he is incapable of True Love, having suppressed his true emotions etc.

That may have been a brave, bold thing to say at the time, but today it comes across like something an old hippie would say; kind of cliched and trite, and a bit naive.

Just because something has become a cliche does not make it untrue or less correct. I like how eloquently he trows the thought and anger at the reader "the millions" that in the end take his idea and by "shouting" it makes it into "cliched and trite, and a bit naive" rhetoric that "love" message had become in 70s
poetic justice? heh
thanks dhodges looks like good book written by intelligent person, even if somewhat bitter. Can you blame him though?.
ps. and no im not "aging hippy" ;)