Media, language, time these are the giant claws with which Power manipulates humanity and moulds it brutally to its own perspective. These claws are not very adept, admittedly, but their effectiveness is enormously increased by the fact that people are not aware that they can resist them, and often do not even know the extent to which they are already spontaneously doing so. Stalin's show trials proved that it only takes a little patience and perseverance to get a man to accuse himself of every imaginable crime and appear in public begging to be executed. Consciousness acquiesces, and the body follows suit. Plants transplanted to an unfavourable soil die.
Animals adapt to their environment.
Human beings transform theirs. Thus death is not the same thing for plants, animals and humans. Where man fails to change his surroundings, he too is in the situation of an animal. Adaptation is the law of the animal world. And today, the harder people try to find salvation in appearances, the more vigorously is it borne in upon them by the ephemeral and inconsistent nature of the spectacle that they live like dogs and die like bundles of hay.