Difference between revisions of "40: Introducing The Portal Essay Club - What if everyone is simply insane?"

And then I think about who in the present really constitutes the screamers?

And then I think about who in the present really constitutes the screamers?

And I wanted to read a little bit at the very end of this essay, just to remind ourselves, and to mention a friend. "What can the screamers do but go on screaming until they get blue in the face? I know one who used to tour this country addressing meetings at an average of 10 a week. He is a well known London publisher. Before each meeting, he used to lock himself up in a room, close his eyes, and imagine in detail for 20 minutes that he was one of the people in Poland who were killed. One day he tried to feel what it was like to be suffocated by chloride gas in a death train. The other, he had to dig his grave with 200 others and then face a machine gun, which of course is rather unprecise and capricious in its aiming. Then he walked out to the platform and talked, he kept going for a full year before he collapsed with a nervous breakdown. He had a great command of his audiences, and perhaps he has done some good. Perhaps he has brought the two planes, divided by miles of distance"—again, the thicket, if you will—"an inch closer to each other". So, in other words, it's very little that has been done, but even an inch is less distance if there are miles.

And I wanted to read a little bit at the very end of this essay, just to remind ourselves, and to mention a friend. "What can the screamers do but go on screaming until they get blue in the face? I know one who used to tour this country addressing meetings at an average of 10 a week. He is a well known London publisher. Before each meeting, he used to lock himself up in a room, close his eyes, and imagine in detail for 20 minutes that he was one of the people in Poland who were killed. One day he tried to feel what it was like to be suffocated by chloride gas in a death train. The other, he had to dig his grave with 200 others and then face a machine gun, which of course is rather unprecise and capricious in its aiming. Then he walked out to the platform and talked, he kept going for a full year before he collapsed with a nervous breakdown. He had a great command of his audiences, and perhaps he has done some good. Perhaps he has brought the two planes, divided by miles of distance"—again, the thicket, if you will—"an inch closer to each other". So, in other words, it's very little that has been done, but even an inch is less distance if there are miles.