8 Living in Revolution
the first murder story because one of them had more to
contribute to the community chest than the other.
Another reason for the loss of a collective paradise be-
comes clear today as we think so much of the common good
to be reached by social effort. The efficiency of organiza-
tion becomes an ideal and an end in itself; and before we
know it we are trying to shape people to fit the organiza-
tion. The laborer must conform to the pattern of the union;
the individual must be suited to a social system; the citizen
must be straight-jacketed to make an efficient state. Instead
of organization being made for man, man finds himself
being made for organization—until he becomes the victim
of his own society.
Here eternal vigilance is the price of freedom and per-
sonality; with no perfect solution anywhere in sight. This
points to the fact that our real, enduring satisfactions lie
in some community of life that is more than a convenience
for obtaining our desires.
Joseph Conrad, in the famous preface to The Nigger of
the Narcissus, says that the scientist (and he might have
added the business man and the advertisers) appeals to
qualities that fit us for making a living in the endless quest
for more apples. But the artist appeals to the “invincible
conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of
innumerable hearts—to solidarity in joy, in sorrow, in as-
pirations, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other,
which binds together all humanity—the dead to the living
and the living to the unborn.”
This is not a natural bond of convenience; it is a spiritual
bond of a higher order of satisfaction. We all have experi-
enced this in our families where at first we were bound to
others out of necessity. When we began to assert a will of
our own, we became disturbers of the original peace. Some
parents have tried to maintain the old paradise by threat-