A False Progress
“I had the misfortune to be nourished by the dreams and visions of Great Americans — the poets and the seers. Some other breed of men has won out. The world which is in the making fills me with dread. . . . It is a world suited for monomaniacs obsessed with the idea of progress – but a false progress, a progress that stinks. It is a world cluttered with useless objects which men and women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to regard as useful. The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in the world. Whatever does not lend itself to being bought and sold, whether in the realm of things, ideas, principles, dreams or hopes, is debarred. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker is a fool, the artist the escapist, the man of vision a criminal.” — Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare