moon traveller herald

i. Kicking around our pad like many others is a paperback copy of 1984. For the heck of it in the doctor’s waiting room this week I read the Afterword there, written by Erich Fromm. Fromm was a shrink who shrunk from Freud’s more strident theories on human behavior, theorizing that ‘freedom’ was a more essential part of the human complex than Siggy said. [Truth Be Told [TBT]:I confused Erich Hoffer with Eric Fromm, as they both found a spot in the same cell in my brain… Hoffer was the author of The True Believer, a look at doctrinal Soviet-era communism, and was known as the Longshoreman Philosopher. But Google set me right, and now I put Fromm and Hoffer into different brain cells. David Hofstetter was even more helpful in this.] Fromm in Afterword places 1984 as chief among Dystopian works…tho the term he uses in 1961 is ‘negative utopia’. Utopian works beginning with Thomas More’s Utopia, writes Fromm, build on a trust in Progress that arose as the Dark Ages gave way to the Renaiss...

  salm 102 Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly. For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers. My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food. In my distress I groan aloud and am reduced to skin and bones. I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof.