An Appeal To Mankind

An Appeal To Mankind

Wake up Little Man! Lay down all arms. In your esoteric sleep you suck on pacifiers and think and do what you are told. But that was then. Now you are our only hope. Our children and thus, our future, are about to be warred on again.

John Stuart Mill said that "mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time, there took place a memorable collision [so that Socrates was] put to death as a criminal."

In a similar vein, Americans can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a man named Wilhelm Reich who died in an American federal prison on charges which today would be laughed out of any court.

In 1947, following a vicious smear article in the New Republic by Mildred Edie Brady, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into Reich's orgone work. The Brady article libelously claimed that Reich was conducting a sex racket, and the FDA assumed that his books must be pornographic literature. The FDA gestapo were uninterested in scientific information concerning the accumulator, and when Reich refused to cooperate with their witch hunt, the investigation bogged down, lacking any evidence against the accumulator.

In 1954, during the Joe McCarthy era, the American feds decided to go after Reich again. Without any proof whatsoever, the Food and Drug Administration succeeded in having a federal court brand the accumulator a fraud, with the added dictum that orgone energy does not exist, and the order that all literature even mentioning orgone energy should be burned. The FDA placed a ban on transporting or using Reich's orgone boxes. Because one of Reich's co-workers continued to transport the orgone boxes, Reich was imprisoned. He died of a heart attack in prison at the age of 60 in 1957, the day before he was to go up for parole.

Today, Reich's books are on sale throughout the world and orgone accumulators are sold in the United States, Germany, and other countries. An orgone box is a 5 by 2 1/2 by 2 1/2 foot box made of layers of sheet metal and wood which Reich claimed pulled a physical-psychic energy from the universe. The accumulators were purchased by doctors and psychiatrists in both the U.S. and abroad.

Reich wrote Listen, Little Man! in 1946 and it was published in 1948 although it was written with no intention of publishing it. The book is Reich's warning to the common man in all societies that he, the little, average man, is lethally responsible for the rapidly spreading social cancer of fascism. Reich had seen how common citizens in Germany embraced their enslavement by their Nazi overlords. He was now seeing the reappearance of the same phenomenon in the United States and Europe. Someone needed to tell the average citizen that his personal characteristics were at the root of the world-wide plague of totalitarianism.
[...]
"It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. . . . Anyone who wants to safeguard the life-force from the emotional plague must learn to make at least as much use of the right of free speech that we enjoy in America for good ends, as the emotional plague does for evil ones. Granted equal opportunity for expression, rationality is bound to win out in the end. That is our great hope."
[Slightly modified from: http://www.hermes-press.com/reich.htm ]

So, why is Wilhelm Reich's work seemingly acceptable today? Why are his books on sale, his work being discussed openly and interest in "orgone" energy being discussed freely, without fear of censuring?

My answer is that people are 'waking up' slowly but surely, small steps at the time. We've all heard stories of the stupid, idiotic superstitions of the past that have led to everything from witch hunts to the most idiotic laws to ever be placed on the books. Yes, it is much easier to see limiting thoughts and beliefs when we look back on them from the present, even if it is too late to save those who have died needlessly.

It seems to me that every age of man has had it's visionaries and sages that have tried to warn us of the irreversible destructions of life and property that occur while a part of our mind and being 'sleeps' while holding tightly to the teddy bears and pacifiers of the day - the preoccupations of daily life and mainstream media that keep us unaware of what "the man" is doing behind our back and in the dark.

The clues to what is really going on and the attitude of those whose actions are ruining the future of our children and the planet are all around us if we pay attention. Even BP's head honcho referred to us as "small".

Unfortunately, the time for sleep is over. It is time to wake up. That pre-awake slumber that many of us are delaying in, is about to be rudely disturbed by more needless death and destruction.

It's time to awaken and take a look around us, because while we 'slept', the wolves and vampires and psychopaths thirsting for blood moved into our house and they are about to completely take it over.

It's time to call on the "Little Man" for help. But first, we need to get Little Man's attention:

We'll start with the more well-known George Gurdjieff from his book "In Search of the Miraculous, p.59":

“It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand.”

With that as a lead in, I wanted to introduce the following. It's a bit long, but I think the reader will enjoy it:
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THEY CALL YOU Little Man, or Common Man. They say your day has dawned, the "Age of the Common Man."

You don't say that, little man. They do, the vice presidents of great nations, the labor leaders, the repentant sons of the bourgeoisie, the statesmen and philosophers. They give you the future, but they ask no questions about your past.
...
A doctor, a shoemaker, mechanic, or educator has to know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and earn his living. For several decades now you have been taking over, throughout the world. The future of the human race depends on your thoughts and actions. But your teachers and masters don't tell you how you really think and what you really are; no one dares to confront you with the one truth that might make you the unswerving master of your fate. You are "free" in only one respect: free from the self-criticism that might help you to govern your own life.
...
You're a "little man," a "common man." Consider the double meaning of these words "little" and "common"...[ed.note: Or in BP's words: "small"]

Don't run away! Have the courage to look at yourself!

"By what right are you lecturing me?" I see the question in your frightened eyes. I hear it on your insolent tongue. You're afraid to look at yourself, little man, you're afraid of criticism, and afraid of the power that is promised you. What use will you make of your power? You don't know. You're afraid to think that your self--the man you feel yourself to be--might someday be different from what it is now: free rather than cowed, candid rather than scheming; capable of loving, not like a thief in the night but in broad daylight. You despise yourself, little man. You say "Who am I that I should have an opinion, govern my life, and call the world mine?" You're right: who are you to lay claim to your life? I will tell you who you are.

You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task which meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness, endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.

I'm afraid of you, little man, very much afraid, because the future of mankind depends on you. I'm afraid of you because your main aim in life is to escape--from yourself. You're sick, little man, very sick. It's not your fault; but it's your responsibility to get well. You'd have shaken off your oppressors long ago if you hadn't countenanced oppression and often given it your direct support. No police force in the world would have had the power to crush you if you had an ounce of self-respect in your daily life, if you were aware, really aware, that without you life could not go on for one hour. Has your liberator told you this? He called you "Workers of the World," but he didn't tell you that you and [i]you alone[/i] are responsible for your life (and not for the honor of the fatherland).

You value security before truth. You fritter away your freedom.

No one has ever asked you, little man, why you haven't been more successful in winning freedom, or if you have won it, why you have quickly lost it to a new master.

YOU:
"Did you hear that? He has the gall to cast doubt on democracy and the revolutionary upsurge of the workers of the world. Down with the revolutionary, down with the counter-revolutionary! Down!"

ME:
Take it easy, little Fuhrer of all democrats and of the world proletariat. I am convinced that your real prospects of attaining freedom depend more on the answer to that one question than on ten thousand resolutions of your party congresses.

YOU:
"Down with him! He has insulted the nation and the vanguard of the revolutionary proletariat! Down with him! Stand him up against the wall!"

ME:
All your cries of "Up" and "Down" won't bring you one step closer to your goal, little man. You have always thought you could safeguard your freedom by standing people "up against the wall." You'd do better to stand yourself up to a mirror . . .

YOU:
"Down! . . ."

ME:
Take it easy, little man. I don't mean to insult you, I'm only trying to show you why you've never been able to win freedom, or to preserve it for any length of time. Doesn't that interest you all?

YOU:
"Do--o--own . . ."
[...]

ME:
You come running to me and ask: "Dear, good, great, Doctor! What should I do? What should we do? My whole house is collapsing, the wing is whistling through the cracks in the walls, my child is sick and my wife is miserable. I'm sick myself. What should I do? What should we do?"

"Build your house on granite. By granite I mean your nature that you're torturing to death, the love in your child's body, your wife's dream of life, your own dream of life when you were sixteen. Exchange your illusions for a bit of truth. Throw out your politicians and diplomats!
[...]
Go to the library instead of the prize fight, go to foreign countries rather than to Coney Island. And first and foremost, [i]think straight[/i], trust the quiet inner voice that tells you what to do. You hold your life in your hands, don't entrust it to anyone else, least of all to your chosen leaders. BE YOURSELF! Any number of great men have told you that."

In view of all this, I'm bidding you goodbye, little man. I will serve you no more, I refuse to let my concern for you torture me slowly to death. You can't follow me to the distant places I'm bound for. You'd be scared to death if you so much as suspected what the future has in store for you--because undoubtedly you're in the process of inheriting the earth, little man! My remote solitudes are a part of your future. But for the present I don't want you as a traveling companion. As a traveling companion you may be all right in a club car, but not where I'm going.

YOU:
"Kill him! He despises the civilization that I, the little man in the street, have built. I'm a free citizen of a free democracy. Hurrah!"

ME:
You're nothing, little man! Nothing whatever! You didn't build this civilization, it was built by a few of your more decent masters. Even if you're a builder, you don't know what you're building. If I or someone else were to say, "Take responsibility for what you're building," you'd call me a traitor to the proletariat and flock to the Father of all Proletarians, who does not say such things.

You're not free, little man, and you haven't the faintest idea what freedom is. You wouldn't know how to live in freedom. Who brought the plague to power in Europe? You little man! And in America? Think of Wilson!

YOU:
"Listen to him! He's accusing me, the little man! Who am I? What power have I to interfere with the President of the United States? I do my duty and obey orders. I don't meddle with politics."

ME:
When you drag thousands of men, women, and children to the gas chambers, you're only obeying orders. Is that right, little man? And you're so innocent you don't even know that such things are happening. And you're only a poor devil, whose opinion counts for nothing, who hasn't even got one. And who are you, anyway, that you should meddle with politics? I know, I know! I've heard all that many times. But then I ask: [b]Why don't you do your duty in silence when a wise man tells you that you and you alone are responsible for what you do, or tries to persuade you not to beat your children, or pleads with you for the thousandth time to stop obeying dictators? What becomes of your duty, your innocent obedience, then?[/b] No, little man, when truth speaks, you don't listen. You listen only to bluster. And then you shout Hurrah! Hurrah! You're cowardly and cruel, little man; you have no sense of your true duty, which is to be a man and to preserve humanity. You imitate wise men so badly and bandits so well. Your movies and radio programs are full of murder.

You will drag yourself and you meanness through many centuries before becoming your own master. I'm bidding you goodbye in order to work more effectively for your future, because when I'm far away you can't kill me, and you respect my work more in the distance than close at hand. You despise anything that's too close to you! That's why you put your proletarian general or marshal on a pedestal: then, however contemptible he may be, you can respect him. And that's why great men have given you a wide berth since the dawn of history

YOU:
"That's megalomania. The man is stark raving mad!"

ME:
I know, little man, you're very quick to diagnose madness when a truth doesn't suit you. You regard yourself as "normal"!

You've locked up all the lunatics and the world is run by normal people. Then who's to blame for all the trouble? Not you, of course; you only do your duty, and who are you to have an opinion of your own? I know. You don't have to say it again. It's not you I'm worried about, little man! But when I think of your children, when I think how you torment the life out of them trying to make them "normal" life yourself, I almost want to come back to you and do what I can to stop your crimes. But I also know that you've taken precautions against that by appointing commissioners of education and child care.

YOU:
"He's insulting me, he's desecrating my mission!"

ME:
I'm not insulting you, little man, and I'm not desecrating your mission. I'll be only too glad if you show me I'm wrong, if you prove that you're capable of looking at yourself and recognizing yourself, if you can give me the same kind of proofs as I'd expect of a mason who's building a house.

YOU:
"But where do you get your wisdom, you intellectual servant of the revolutionary proletariat?"

ME:
From your own depths, you eternal proletarian of human reason!

YOU:
"Listen to that! He gets his wisdom from my depths! I haven't got any depths. And what kind of individualistic talk is this, anyway!!"

ME:
Oh yes, little man, you have depths, but you don't know it. You're afraid, mortally afraid of your depths; that's why you neither feel them nor see them. That's why your head swims when you look into the depths, why you reel as if you were on the edge of a precipice. You're afraid of falling and losing your "special character." Because, try as you will to find yourself, it's always the same cruel, envious, greedy, thieving little man that turns up. I wouldn't have written this long appeal to you, little man, if you didn't have depths. And I know these depths in you, little man, because in my work as a physician I discovered them when you came to me with your affliction. Your depths are your great future. And that is why I can tell you what you will certainly not do in the future. A time will come when you won't even understand how you were able, in these four thousand years of unculture, to do all the things you have done. Now will you listen to me?

"Why shouldn't I listen to a nice little utopia? In any case, nothing can be done about it my dear Doctor. I'll always be the little man of the people with no opinion of my own. And anyway, who am I to . . . ?"

Just be still! You're hiding behind the myth of the little man, because you're afraid of getting into the stream of life and of having to swim--if only for the sake of your children and grandchildren.

All right. [I will tell you what you [i]will not[/i] do in the future] The first of all the many things you will not do in the future is to regard yourself as a little man with no opinion of his own, who says, "Anyway, who am I to . . . ?" You have an opinion of your own and in the future you will regard it as a disgrace not to know it, not to express it and stand up for it.

YOU:
"But what will public opinion say about my opinion? I'll be crushed like a worm if I express my own opinion!"

ME:
What you call "public opinion," little man, is the aggregate of all the opinions of little men and women. Every little man and every little woman has inside him a sound opinion of his own and a particular kind of unsound opinion. Their unsound opinions spring from the fear of the unsound opinions of all the other little men and women. That's why the sound opinions don't come to light. For instance, you will no longer believe that you "count for nothing." You will know and proclaim that you are the mainstay and foundation of this human society. Don't run away! Don't be afraid! It's not so bad to be a responsible mainstay of human society.

YOU:
"What then must I do in order to be the mainstay of society?"

ME:
Nothing new or unusual. Just go on doing what you're already doing: till your field, wield your hammer, examine your patient, take your children out playing or to school, write articles about the events of the day, investigate the secrets of nature. You're already doing all these things, but you think they're unimportant and that only what Marshal Medalchest or Prince Blowhard says or does is important.

YOU:
"You're a dreamer, Doctor. Don't you see that Marshal Medalchest and Prince Blowhard have the soldiers and the arms needed to make war, to mobilize me for their war, and to blow my field, my factory, my laboratory, or my office to pieces?"

ME:
You get yourself mobilized, your field and your factory are blown to pieces, because you shout hurrah hurrah when they mobilize you and blow your factory and field to pieces. Prince Blowhard would have neither soldiers nor arms if you really knew that a field was for growing wheat and a factory for making furniture or shoes, that fields and factories were not made to be blown to pieces, and if you stood foursquare behind your knowledge. Your Marshal Medalchest and your Prince Blowhard don't know these things. They themselves don't work in a field, factory, or office. They think you work not to feed and clothe your children but for the grandeur of the German or the Workers' Fatherland.

YOU:
"Then what should I do? I hate war; my wife cries her heart out when I'm drafted, my children starve when the proletarian armies occupy my land, corpses pile up by the millions . . . All I want to do is till my field and play with the children after work, love my wife at night, and dance, sing, and make music on holidays. What should I do?"

ME:
Just go on doing what you've been doing and wanting to do all along: work, let your children grow up happily, love your wife at night. If you stuck to this program knowingly and single-mindedly there would be no war. Your wife wouldn't be fair game for the sex-starved soldiers of the Workers Fatherland, your orphaned children wouldn't starve in the streets, and you yourself wouldn't end up staring glassy-eyed at the blue sky on some far off "field of honor."

YOU:
"But supposing I want to live for my work and my wife and my children, what can I do if the Huns or Germans or Japanese or Russians or somebody else marches in, and forces me to make war? I have to defend my house and home, don't I?

ME:
Right you are, little man. But what you fail to see if that the "Huns" of all nations are simply millions of little men like yourself who persist in shouting hurrah, hurrah when Prince Blowhard (who doesn't work) calls them to the colors; little men like yourself who believe that they count for nothing and ask, "Who am I to have an opinion of my own?"

If once you knew that you [i]do[/i] count for something, that you [i]do[/i] have a sound opinion of your own, that your field and factory are meant to provide for [i]life[/i] and not for death, then, little man, you yourself would be able to answer the question you've just asked. You wouldn't need any diplomats. You'd stop shouting hurrah, hurrah and laying wreaths on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (I know your unknown soldier, little man. I got acquainted with him when I was fighting my mortal enemy in the mountains of Italy. He's the same little man as yourself, who thought he had no opinion of his own.) Instead of laying your national consciousness at the feet of your Prince Blowhard or your marshal of the world proletariat to be trampled on, you'd oppose them with [i]your consciousness of your own worth and your pride in your work[/i]. You'd be able to get acquainted with your brother, the little man in Japan, China, and every other Hun country, to give him your sound opinion of your function as a worker, doctor, farmer, father, and husband, and convince him in the end that to make war impossible he need only stick to his work and his love.

YOU:
"That's all very well and good. But now they've made these atom bombs. A single one of them can kill hundreds of thousands of people!"

ME:
Use your head, little man! Do you think Prince Blowhard makes atom bombs? No, they're made by little man who shout hurrah, hurrah instead of refusing to make them. You see, little man, it all boils down to one thing, to you and your sound or unsound thinking. And you, the most brilliant scientist of the twentieth century, if you were not a microscopically little man, you'd have thought in terms of the world and not of any nation. Your great intellect would have shown you how to keep the atom bomb out of the world; or if the logic of scientific development made such an invention inevitable, you'd have brought all your influence to bear to prevent it from being used. You're caught in a vicious circle of your own making, and you can't get out of it because your thought and vision have taken the wrong direction. You comforted millions of little men by telling them your atomic energy would cure their cancer and rheumatism, though you were well aware that this was impossible, that you had devised an instrument of murder and nothing else. You and your physics have landed in the same blind alley. You know it, but you won't admit it. [i]You're finished! Now and for all time![/i] You know it, I've told you so very plainly. But you keep silent, you go on dying of cancer and a broken heart, and on your very deathbed you cry out, "Long live culture and technology!" I tell you, little man, that you've dug your own grave with your eyes open. You think the new "era of atomic energy" has dawned. It has dawned all right, but not in the way you think. Not in your inferno but in my quiet, industrious workshop in a far corner of America.

It is entirely up to you, little man, whether or not you go off to war. If you only know that you're working for life and not for death! If you only knew that all little men on this earth are exactly like yourself, for better or worse.

Someday ( how soon depends exclusively on you ) you'll stop shouting hurrah, hurrah. You'll stop telling fields and operating factories that are slated for destruction. Someday, I say, you'll no longer be willing to work for death but only for life.

YOU:
"Should I declare a general strike?"

ME:
I'm not so sure. Your general strike is a poor weapon. You'll be accused--and rightly so--of letting your own women and children starve. By going on strike you will be demonstrating your high responsibility for the weal or woe of your society. Striking is not working. I've told you that someday you would work for life, not that you'd stop working. If you insist on the word "strike," calling it a "working strike." Strike by working for yourself, your children, your wife or woman, your society, your product, or your farm. Make it plain that you have no time for war, that you have more important things to do. Outside every big city on earth, mark off a field, build high walls around it, and there let the diplomats and marshals of the earth shoot each other. That's what you could do, little man, if only you'd stop shouting hurrah, hurrah and stop believing that you're a nobody without an opinion of your own . . .

It's all in your hands, little man: not only your hammer or stethoscope but your life and your children's lives. You shake your head. You think I'm a utopian, if not a "Red."

You ask me, little man, when you will have a good, secure life. The answer is alien to your nature.

You'll have a good, secure life when being alive means more to you than security, love more than money, your freedom more than public or partisan opinion; when the mood of Beethoven's or Bach's music becomes the mood of your whole life--you have it in you, little man, somewhere deep down in a corner of your being; when your thinking is in harmony, and no longer in conflict, with your feelings; when you've learned to recognize two things in their season: your gifts and the onset of old age; when you let yourself be guided by the thoughts of great sages and no longer by the crimes of great warriors: when you cease to set more store by a marriage certificate than by love between man and woman; when you learn to recognize your errors promptly and not too late, as you do today; when you pay the men and women who teach your children better than politicians; when truths inspire you and empty formulas repel you; when you communicate with your fellow workers in foreign countries directly, and no longer through diplomats; when instead of enraging you as it does today, your adolescents daughter's happiness in love makes your heart swell with joy; when you can only shake your head at the memory joy; when you can only shake your head at the memory of the days when small children were punished for touching their sex organs; when the human faces you see on the street are no longer drawn with grief and misery but glow with freedom, vitality, and serenity; when human bodies cease to walk this earth with rigid, retracted pelvises and frozen sex organs.
[...]
You ask for guidance and advice, little man. For thousands of years you have had guidance and advice, good and bad. Not bad advice but your own smallness is to blame for your persistent wretchedness. I could give you good advice, but in view of the way you think and are, you wouldn't be able to convert it into action for the benefit of all.

YOU:
"Am I then utterly worthless? You don't give me credit for one ounce of decency. You make hash out of me. But look here. I work hard, I support my wife and children, I try to lead a good life, I serve my country. I can't be as bad as all that!"

ME:
I know you're a decent, industrious, cooperative animal, comparable to a bee or an ant. All I've done is to lay bare the little man in you, who has been wrecking your life for thousands of years. You are great, little man, when you're not mean and small. Your greatness, little man, is the only hope we have left. You're great when you attend lovingly to your trade, when you take pleasure in carving and building and painting, in sowing and reaping, in the blue sky and the deer and the morning dew, in music and dancing, in your growing children, and in the beautiful body of your wife or husband; when you go to the planetarium to study the stars, to the library to read what other men and women have thought about life. You're great when your grandchild sits on your lap and you tell him of times long past and look into the uncertain future with his sweet, childlike curiosity. You're great, mother, when you lull your baby to sleep; when with tears in your eyes you pray fervently for his future happiness; and when hour after hour, year after year, you build this happiness in your child.

You're great, little man, when you sing the good, warmhearted folk songs, or when you dance the old dances to the tune of an accordion, because folk songs are good for the soul, and they're the same the world over. And you're great when you say to your friend:

"I thank my fate that I've been able to live my life free from filth and greed, to see my children grow and to look on as they first began to babble, to take hold of things, to walk, to play, to ask questions, to laugh and to love; that I've been able to preserve, in all its freedom and purity, my feeling for the springtime and its gentle breezes, for the gurgling of the brook that flows past my house and the singing of the birds in the woods; that I've taken no part in the gossip of malicious neighbors; that I've been happy in the embrace of my wife or husband and have felt the stream of life in my body; that I haven't lost my bearings in troubled times, and that my life has had meaning and continuity. For I have always hearkened to the gentle voice within me that said, 'Only one thing matters: live a good, happy life. Do your heart's bidding, even when it leads you on paths that timid souls would avoid. Even when life is a torment, don't let it harden you.'"
[...]
I have come to the end of my appeal to you, little man. I could have gone on indefinitely. But if you've read my words attentively and candidly, you will be able to recognize the little man in you even in connections I haven't mentioned. For one and the same state of mind is at the bottom of all your mean actions and thoughts.

Regardless of what you've done and will do to me, of whether you glorify me as a genius or lock me up as a madman, of whether you worship me as your deliverer or hang or torture me as a spy, your affliction will force you to recognize sooner or later that I have discovered the laws of living energy and have given you an instrument with which to govern your lives with the conscious purpose which thus far you have applied only to the operation of machines. I have been a faithful engineer to your organism. Your grandchildren will follow in my footsteps and become wise engineers of human nature. I have opened up to you the vast realm of the living energy within you, your cosmic essence. That is my great reward.
[...]


Wilhelm Reich

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What you've just read is only a small glimpse of the power of the book "Listen, Little Man!" by Wilhelm Reich. The book is 127 jam packed pages of honesty filled with wit and wisdom. The book is also filled with brilliant illustrations by famous cartoonist and writer William Steig.
Here's 30 pages of it: http://www.listenlittleman.com/