Lipton’s Journal/December 17, 1954/59

Equations: Man is born with a soul which is part of the collective soul. Society is composed of the net of men’s unwilled actions. It is opposed to the soul.

Each child enters the world with a pure soul (probably). (It is worse if they enter with souls already partially destroyed by their parents.)

Society attempts to destroy the soul in order to maintain its stability. The soul fights back. The war between the two is what we call the world which is the battleground between society and the universe (the collective soul—how inadequate are all these words).

Through history up to now the soul of the savage, which was all-soul, relinquished a part of its soul to enable man to battle against nature for until nature was conquered, at least in its inhospitable manifestations, man was doomed to remain an animal.

The movement of man to find his soul worked its drama upon society, for as society (which is the concretion of the collective surrender of man’s will) developed and altered men, removing them further and further from their souls, so did man fight back, occasionally altering society, the movement of his soul (with what endless waste) improving social structure. But usually losing his soul.

The twentieth century marked the point in history where society was ready to conquer nature completely. But the tragedy was that by then the majority of men had virtually lost their souls—they were psychopaths, and leaders, and unfeeling. So society instead of being finally conquered by men as was conceived in the original contract, instead drew away from men. The interrelation between man and society was broken. Society went its way, and man (those who had souls) retreated, or gave themselves up to being the machines of society. And the revolution never took place. And its only substitute, its echo, its polarity, was totalitarianism.

War is the symbolic collective act of man’s anguish—“They got tired of living at home, and so they went to war.” Living at home is not a home, it is a war against society, and when it becomes collectively intolerable, it is turned against society, but a false image of society—the enemy. It is also society’s way of not allowing the battle against nature to be won by sheer development of technique. If man wants socialism, and from that, God, he must win it by revolution.