The Great Rebellion

Book excerpt



Unbelievable though it may seem, it is certainly true that this much cried-up modern civilization is frightfully ugly. It lacks the transcendental characteristics of the aesthetic sense. It is devoid of inner beauty.

We boast a great deal about those same old hideous buildings which look like real mouseholes.

The world has become tremendously boring, the same old streets and the hideous blocks of flats everywhere.

All of this has become tiresome, in the north and in the south, in the east and in the west of the world.

It is the same old hideous, nauseating and fruitless 'uniform'. 'It's very modern!' exclaim the multitudes.

We look like real vain peacocks in the suit we wear and in our very shiny shoes, even though millions of hungry, undernourished and miserable wretches move around us, here, there and everywhere.

Simplicity and natural, spontaneous and ingenuous beauty, without artifices and vain make-up, have disappeared in the female sex. Now we are modern. That is life.

People have become frightfully cruel. Charity has grown cold. No one takes pity on anyone any more.

The windows of the luxurious stores shine with luxurious merchandise which the wretches definitely cannot afford.

The only thing pariahs in our society can do is gaze at silks and jewels, perfumes in luxurious bottles and umbrellas for the rain: to look without being able to touch-a torment similar to that of Tantalus.

Today's people have become very coarse. The scent of friendship and the fragrance of sincerity have disappeared radically.

The multitudes, overburdened with taxes, groan. Everyone has problems. We are owed and we owe. We are prosecuted and have no money to pay. Worries are shattering brains. No one has peace of mind.

Bureaucrats, boasting big paunches and smoking good cigars, on which they psychologically rest, play political jugglery with their minds and could not care less about the pain of peoples.

Nowadays no one is happy, still less the middle class; it finds itself between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Rich and poor, believers and unbelievers, merchants and beggars, shoemakers and tinsmiths, all live because they have to. They drown their sorrows in alcohol and even become drug addicts to escape from themselves.

People have become malicious, suspicious, mistrustful, cunning, wicked. No one believes in anyone any more. New conditions, certificates, restrictions of all kinds, documents, credentials, etc, are invented every day. Anyway, none of that is of any use any longer. Cunning people get around all this nonsense. They

No job brings happiness. The meaning of true love has disappeared, and people marry today and divorce tomorrow.

Family unity has regrettably disappeared. Organic shame no longer exists. Lesbianism and homosexuality are very common these days.

Our aim in this book is to know something about all of this, to try to know the cause of so much rottenness, to investigate, to seek.

I am talking in the language of practical life. I am eager to know what hides behind that hideous mask of existence.

I am thinking aloud, and let the knaves of the intellect say whatever they want to.

Theories became tiresome and are even sold and resold in the market place, so what?

Theories are only good for causing us worries and for making our lives even more miserable.

Goethe rightly said, 'Every theory is grey and only the tree of golden fruit, which is life, is green'.

Poor people got tired of so many theories. These days much is spoken about practicality. We need to be practical and to really know the causes of our sufferings.