I'm A Pessimist About Probabilities, I'm An

Nothing Is Unthinkable, Nothing Impossible To The Balanced Person, Provided It Comes Out Of The Needs Of Life And Is Dedicated To Life's Further Development.

A Multitude Of Uniform, Unidentifiable Houses, Lined Up Inflexibly, At Uniform Distances, On Uniform Roads, In A Treeless Communal Waste, Inhabited By People Of The Same Class, The Same Income, The Same Age Group, Witnessing The Same Television Performances, Eating The Same Tasteless Prefabricated Foods, From The Same Freezers, Conforming In Every Outward And Inward Respect To The Common Mold.

Deliberately, On Every Historic Occasion, We Piously Fake Events For The Benefit Of Photographers, While The Actual Event Often Occurs In A Different Fashion; And We Have The Effrontery To Call These Artful Dress Rehearsals Authentic Historic Documents.

Each One Of Us, As Long As Life Stirs Is Us, May Play A Part In Extricating Ourselves From The Power System By Asserting Our Primacy As People In Quiet Acts Of Mental Or Physical Withdrawal-in Gestures Of Non-conformity, In Abstentions, Restrictions, Inhibitions, Which Will Liberate Us From The Domination Of The Pentagon Of Power.

In The Name Of Economy A Thousand Wasteful Devices Would Be Invented; And In The Name Of Efficiency New Forms Of Mechanical Time-wasting Would Be Devised: Both Processes Gained Speed Through The Nineteenth Century And Have Come Close To The Limit Of Extravagant Futility In Our Own Time. But Labor-saving Devices Could Only Achieve Their End-that Of Freeing Mankind For Higher Functions-if The Standard Of Living Remained Stable. The Dogma Of Increasing Wants Nullified Every Real Economy And Set The Community In A Collective Squirrel-cage.