Record of a Friendship

staff today who have this neurotic attitude to me and therefore to their
work here. And ... I don't know how to solve the problem. If people
who are interested in my work or yours, are incapable of helping that
work because of emotional complexes (and we seem to attract that type)
what the hell? With his head B. is all Reichian ... greatest scientist of
the age etc. With his heart he is a neurotic little boy with one motive ...
to rise by knocking the other fellow down. It is so damned pathetic and
alarming. Are there no complexless people in the world? Einstein
apparently dropped you on emotional grounds, and when over here the
Bernals and Haldanes say that your methods are unscientific, are we to
say that their attitude is emotional and not realistic? I think it is emo­
tional to a large extent. Then where is your Little Man to come in? You
say he is almost ready to take over. But who is he? Is he more complex­
free than the Barakans and Haldanes? B. says that you told him that the
present generation is doomed and that no one ought to try to help it. I
said he must have got you wrong, for the coming generation is to be
educated by the stiff-stomached present one, and if we can't do some­
thing to change even a tiny fraction of this generation, the new one will
be moulded wrongly all the way. Myoid pupils won't forbid Onanie
[masturbation] in their kids, won't beat them, will treat them as human
beings with rights of their own. Some will go all the way about adolescent
freedom. So that the Zoe generation will start off without many of the
ordinary handicaps, but will the kids of the Little Man who must go to
disciplined schools where sex is taboo and morals are ready-made
"don'ts" and religion is compulsory, will his kids have much chance in
life? So that I take it that B. got you completely wrong. Yes, we are
damned. Granted. Damned and blasted to hell without any atomic bomb.
Tomorrow is a totalitarian one whether communist or fascist, or prob­
ably the two in one. And the little man is to be the big bureaucrat, and
he isn't ready to be that. I fear the increase of mechanisation, that the
little man will see life in terms of five-year plans and tractors and
electricity, and freedom as we think of it will cease to have even a name.
The little man won't allow me to say what I like about education; he
won't tolerate your sex-economy ideas. It isn't the parents of the new
generation I fear so much; the Fuhrers outside the home will do the
damage this time, the Adolfs and Joes. With their radio and films they
can destroy humanity, and have gone far to do so already. So that I
want to know more of your little man. I want to know how to
de-Barakanise him.
Great news about the Accumulator. Please give us a warning time-