As a matter of fact, we are better than we know.
We trail behind us an endless tradition of combat, triumph, conquest
and we feel we’ve got to keep it up, keep on combating, triumphing,
conquering.
When as a matter of fact, the thought of this endless imbecile struggle
of combat
kills us, we are sick of it, to die.
We are fed up with combat,
we feel that if the whole combative, competitive system doesn’t soon
go bust,
we shall.
We want a new world of wild peace, where living is free.
Not this hyena tame peace where no man dare tell another he’s a thief
and yet every man is driven into robbing every other man;
this pretty peace where every man has to fight, and fight foul
to get a living, in the dastardly mean combat
we call free competition and individual enterprise and equal
opportunity.
Why should we have to fight for a living?
Living should be as free to a man as to a bird,
though most birds have to pay, with their lives, where men are.
Why should we brace ourselves up with mean emulation?
If we brace ourselves up, it should be for something we want to do
and we feel is worth doing.
The efforts of men, like the efforts of birds in spring,
would be lovely if they rose from the man himself, spontaneous
pure impulse to make something, to put something forth.
Even if it was only a tin pan.
I see the tin-man, the tinker, sitting day after day on the beach
mending and tinning the pans of all the village
and happy as a wagtail by a pool,
the same with the fishermen sitting darning their nets,
happy as perhaps kings used to be, but certainly aren’t.
Work is the clue to a man’s life.
But it must be free work, not done just for money, but for fun.
Why should we compete with one another?
As a matter of fact, when the tinker looks so happy tinkering
I immediately want to go and do something jolly too.
One free, cheerful activity stimulates another.
Men are not really mean.
Men are made mean, by fear, and a system of grab.
The young know these things quite well.
Why don’t they prepare to act on them?
Then they’d be happy. For we are all so much better than the
system allows us to be.