nyuuzyou/wikis huggingface dataset:
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/333

I have the feeling these days that I could make a remarkable businessman. The reason is that I feel close to the buried appetites of people in a way that is not the talent of the “creative” businessman. He senses the buried needs of people—perhaps not consciously—but the psychopathic intuitive is close to the surface. What keeps him from having our admiration is that the businessman is a good businessman insofar as he is all psychopath and no saint. He uses intuition for his own enrichment with no qualms about the social ends of his work. 
“Social ends” is of course an . It is the social perversion of the brotherhood of man (a genuine expression deep out of the self which knows we are all a part of the whole) but even as a perversion it reflects the echo of the H. One other difference between psychopaths and saints is that the psychopath’s H is deficient in the knowledge of the brotherhood of man. The psychopath has an intense sense of his own needs, but cannot understand the needs of others because that part of his soul is deficient. Why, why it has been crippled, is something else, and I don’t know the answer . . . yet.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/334

A great deal of this journal first manifested itself in my Tarot readings. Even word and consonant echoes. What occurs to me about my character is that I used to be a condemning and highly moral neurotic with intense psychopathic drives. As my “analysis” goes on, I have the feeling that I move from psychopath to saint or mystic in my because my is in retreat. But when I used to give Tarot readings, the extraordinary emanation I “knew” I gave off was because the psychopath and the mystic were evident to everyone in the room. It was the herald of what was coming.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/335

Jealousy. But what a mountain is to be uncovered here. The key is that degraded expressions, as I keep saying, express in perverted form, the true nature of man’s needs. So, simply, jealousy is the degraded expression of the deep desire for the brotherhood of man. If jealous emotions give us pleasure—as is true for most bisexuals—it is not because one is expressing one’s “latent homosexuality” which is the vulgar condemnation analysts generally put upon it, but because, as a practical matter, it is the only way one can feel “close” to another man. (We can feel close to other women by fucking them.)
I remember that once with a girl I loved considerably, I got into an orgy (a quartet) and when she came while the other man was making love to her, I came too just watching—actually receiving the experience. I was horrified, horrified at her, at myself; I loathed the other man. But that was obviously defense against “taking.” I could not admit the other man into brotherhood. But from deep in me, although fundamentally I’m still quite incapable of doing this with Adele, I suspect that there is great joy in giving one’s mate to another man—there is genuine brotherhood at the heart of it. 
Which is why Reich with his incredible instincts and courage was so right about The Sexual Revolution. One cannot have a libertarian egalitarian society until one has the orgy accepted as a genuine part of life. For note, the orgy as I have said before, is the repetition of the family situation—but our first sense of brotherhood is given us by the family, and indeed in the socialized bastardized sense the brotherhood of man is given social sanction within the limits of the family—my mother for example is completely selfless within family limits, she would literally die for one of us. That is why she has so much life: she has gotten away with expressing her all her life under cover of the ; it is why I will always love her, for in that sense she is truly good. The orgy is a reflection of the family, but the family is the first primal shock “in human language,” that is, conceptually, to the infant. It is the first understanding that the I is the We, the first apperception of the brotherhood of man, the communion of all souls.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/336

The cynic. He is the incomplete honest man, the man who cannot accept but has nothing to substitute for it, for he distrusts even himself. In that sense the cynic is modest. He will not compromise his hatred of S, but he cannot express , so all the balked H energies go into constructing a rationalization of his H needs, in reverse of course. He attacks everything because he must—only by diminishing the level of the outer world can he breathe at his own self-despised level. 
But he is still better than most for at least he is an honest man; he has not tried to mutilate the small part of himself he can feel. He is the saint-and-psychopath (in varying degree) enslaved by his intelligence which is the mental part of human creativity completely appropriated by society. Finally, he is the echo of the genius, the pale counterpart, as I will try to describe below.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/337

The conservatism of the female element applies even to heaven. The woman, reaching heaven, is content to stay there. The male element demands to go on—“Is it possible,” he asks with curiosity, “that beyond Heaven there may be Hell. If so, we have to take a look at it.” 
This is the essence of genius, and provides a clue to why there have been so many more men geniuses than women—leaving social considerations aside—finally women did not rebel against their suppressed social role for so many centuries because it was not that essential to them, and indeed much of their “social liberation” is due to the efforts of men, the radical rationalists of the nineteenth century. 
The genius is a person who cannot bear the answer—like the physicist (and in science one finds the most geniuses because science is the most social of the arts, so social that it is nominally called knowledge, and therefore it receives the most sanction). But to repeat, the genius cannot bear the answer; he must go on to pose a new question. So, no matter what nominally he is doing, he is journeying deeper and deeper into the , for the H contains all wisdom possible at any age to man since it is a part of life. 
But to do this, the genius must make a voyage which is opposed to society. No matter what his own notion of it, he is always attacking society because he is always carrying further our knowledge of the Self. (Note, word echo: Knowledge is now—ledge. It is society’s use of soul-intuition. It is the present ledge, the present petrifaction of what the souls of the past have given us.) But to go into the self is to go against society which demands as the condition of its being that people be as self-less (not unselfish—a very important distinction) as possible in order that they be more malleable. 
So, the genius always carries with him the fear of Hell which is society’s most poetic symbol of the punishment it gives for above all symbols, even above Heaven which is misty to people while Hell is concrete (this is true even for organized religions and Stalinism and Hitlerism which make Hell concrete, and leave Heaven to take care of itself). So, as a poetic symbol, Hell is capable of speaking to the deep self. And the genius moves into beauty—which is danger, and into exaltation—which is terror. 
The genius is a man, therefore, who is tormented all of his life by doubt whether he is a saint or a psychopath, good or evil. He is the gambler carried to divinity, for the genius wagers every creative instant of his existence that he is going to heaven and not to hell, and therefore he must be obsessed with feelings of terror and danger. It is a bet to take one’s breath away—not to know never whether one goes to Heaven or Hell, and to be always aware that either is possible. 
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/338

Word echoes. Breath, stripped of r and h becomes bet. The bet is the social action which is the concretion of the life process—breath—give and take. I tried to write “true” above but my fingers wrote ture which is tour. So truth is not the point, the static, the absolute, but the voyage, the tour.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/340

Which brings me to Bob Lidner. The “twist” in Bob is that he entered psychoanalysis not as a rebel essentially but as a manipulator, a con man, a crook. He was going to learn more about people so he could use them better. But that was the top of his soul, and the basic Bob who is the honest rebel has been emerging more and more. Despite himself, his analytic position becomes progressively more radical, more dangerous. He is travelling the spectrum of himself—as I wrote before he is going from the dishonest man to the honest man, and what a world he crosses. Analysis, practicing it, living with it, is a catalyst for him where it is a corset for most analysts, because analysis enables him to express his true being whereas for most analysts it allows only the suppression of the self. So most analysts get more depressed, more unpredictable in their tiny wild actions (Herbert Aldendorff) and Bob gets more open, more amiable, more loving, more delighted with himself and with others as the years go on. And that is why people (practically all my friends) find him so nice, so attractive, are so drawn to him, and then are disappointed in his books. It is his books which still represent the social part of him, the “crook,” the con man of ideas who throws out things only to hide them—the hand is quicker than the eye.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/342

Stimulants. My ideas which started slow this morning are now again coming so fast they are almost out of hand. The surface reason was Seconal and black coffee. I had Lipton’s last night, quite a bit, and then Seconal to bring me down, and then black coffee to bring me up. But I didn’t have enough, I still felt sluggish, so two and a half hours ago I went out to have more, and since then I’ve been flying. 
But what are stimulants? Given the incredible complexity of modern life, the deeper and deeper awareness of the , the more and more elaborate construction of the , trench-warfare is the condition of the soul. (As a wild speculation it opens the idea for an historical inquiry or thesis to the effect that each war which expresses the total of deep collective truths of the soul is the clue to the time which is to follow. So the trench warfare of 1914-1918 is expressed today in the psychic state of the average sensitive intellectual. And the spiritual life of the future, say 1984, may not be 1984 at all, but rather the wild, anarchic, intermittent, destructive and sudden liberating movements of the second world war. But this is a wild one, for the moment anyway.) 
To go on: The only way we can liberate enough H energy to do good work—for society’s weakness is that it cannot defeat H entirely for if it does, society will become totally static and then deteriorate—is to take stimulants and sedatives—one giving more life, one giving more peace, but both opening the H. Yet society cannot allow real sanction to this for too much of the soul might be uncovered. So liquor is tolerated when it must be—marijuana which I understand is less harmful than liquor and considerably cheaper is illegal, sedatives like Seconal are considered the refuge of a weak spineless over-nervous person, and even coffee is frowned on. How many times have we heard people say, “He drinks too much coffee. It’s not good for him.” The wilder drugs like cocaine, heroin, and I predict, mescaline, are hounded and persecuted. 
What I have noticed in myself is that I need stimulants and Lipton’s less and less over the whole than I have before because a breakthrough has come. But I still need them a great deal. However, I have found part of the secret. It is society’s condemnation of stimulants which we carry in ourself which does at least half of their harm. Reduce the S and the body could take a lot more playing around with provided genuine enjoyments of mind and body were the result. It is the half-enjoyments which send us back again and again. We half-know there is something there which is calling to our self, we half-despise ourselves. To wit: fascination.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/343

Fascination keeps us on the saint-psychopath spectrum. Without it we become either saints or psychopaths depending on whether pure attraction (saint) or pure repulsion is felt toward the outer thing (be it person, idea, object, etc.). So, the genius is always fascinated, which is why a genius always expresses himself in work. Work as the product of vs. is also the product of attraction vs. repulsion. 
So it is good in a way that I have my retreats, my depressions over this journal. They are what keep me working. This journal is the record of my attempts to overcome my disgust for these pages. So the journal has grown, and ideas which were crude and banal in the early pages develop into more satisfying insights later. But continually new crude “wild” ideas occur. Those give the hint to where I’m going if I can continue working, that is, continue being repelled, rather than just take off into saintliness and be shriven of repulsion and the desire to work. 
But I feel a real crisis for me as a novelist. My novels have always been explorations. I can never stop to expound the idea once I have it, I have to go on. And where now could I begin a novel? I have the unhappy thought that the insights of these pages have taken away from me ten years of solid novels. I hope not, but I suspect yes. Perhaps now I do have to go back to science which I quit when I was an engineering student because engineering, I knew in my bones, was merely the passive exposition of an idea handed you by another man. Ah, well, Malraux moved on, maybe I can too.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/344

What I neglected to say about Winchell in the notes on radio and voices is that the secret of his success is simply, very simply, that he talks fast on radio. In life I suspect he talks much more slowly. Given the “ear” into one’s that the radio provides, vital experience is longed for. But instead come the sonorities of celebrities, announcers, and advertisements (1939 style say). So Winchell as the liberal and Winchell as the reactionary still had an audience, even if it wasn’t the same audience. He spoke quickly, he gave “electric” communication. Now, he is less important because the principle of speed has been used more and more by television. Announcements are given at top speed and so work better. The comedian of the present is a racer going faster and faster, doing more and more.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/345

Half-way stations. I was the romantic sent out to discover realism—which is Naked. But once the realist, I had to become the realist going out to understand the romantic which is my present state. So, like a boomerang which we hold with both hands we throw ourselves forward, and when we land the boomerang is now us and we the boomerang.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/346

Journalists—another variety of psychopath. They are dishonest men whose dishonesty is the defense (the turning-back) against their desire to know and to destroy. That is why they are so unpleasant. They have to get the story—it is their great compulsion—but of course once they get the story, they never write it. They write a lie instead. 
The worst of these are the political analysts, the “serious” journalists. They cover themselves with expertization, they penetrate into the crevices of society, and feed out social pap. At least the scandal writers, the murder writers, and the columnists occasionally do give out a bit. (The word bit really means in the slang—a bit of truth.) 
Underneath the pious tones with which call girls are written about—in the Post which is a forward paper socially—the pious tone is the tone of the social welfare worker who has everything clocked, rather than a conventionally moral tone. He or she knows that the sexy call girl is really rigid. (Only if this were truly so instead of half-true; why do they hate call-girls? Especially female social workers.) The Life and Time boys are the Harvard variety of the journalist, the man who must learn the truth in order to lie. 
Possible insight: the compulsion to get the story, to know the truth, can be a reflection of the anxiety that if the “truth” is not known, one cannot lie efficiently—by accident one may tell the truth.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/347

An interesting confirmation of the -eating process. While I was having lunch, I stopped at a newsstand to buy a paper. A white-haired lady of sixty-odd was talking to the newsdealer. They were talking about the passing of the Brooklyn Eagle, and in a voice of shock and a little outrage, the white-haired lady said, “But it’s over a hundred years old.” I sensed immediately that it was deeply upsetting to her. She had the psychology of those old people who have been S all their lives. They feel that society should reward them which is why they often are so martyred in their air, and the fact that society changes too and venerable institutions which have become worthless like the Brooklyn Eagle are axed and buried by society itself, or so it seems to them, is terribly painful. 
Anyway, I watched her out of the corner of my eye. She wandered away, she came back to the stand, quiet, but close to being pathetic. Finally, after a little indecision and fumbling, she reached forward and chose a piece of candy from the rack. Truly, sweets are the great unrecognized drug, the one which cushions us against disappointment, but exacts the price of leaving the inert. So, disappointment, fear, even terror are smoothed into depression and flatness by sweets.
I must say the scientist in me leaped when I saw her take the candy. I really feel a little these days like Einstein. I have the feeling that if I go far enough, I will be able to set up an experiment in advance, so to speak. One which might confirm or deny these ideas.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/350

Word echoes. The and he. The boat, etc. etc. was originally he-boat, or his-boat. Long before the child or the savage could understand the general beingness of things (in other words, nouns) they could see them first only as the possessions of others. So, the, is really primitively he. This is true for other languages. In Spanish el is the and el means he. In French le is the and lui is him or to him, but it is also le as in Je le lui donné,—I gave it to him. This adds up to a little confirmatory proof of t as thingness. This and his for example. The th sound in English may involve the depersonalization of human being. Just as de as a prefix has connotations of death added to a word. Detail and tale. Detail and tail.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/353

Horse-racing. An article in Life by a racing bureaucrat decries against horse-doping while giving a marvelous description of its benefits. We are against doping horses because if it works with horses why shouldn’t it work with men? But that is too dangerous for society. Society accepts an innovation pressed by reformers, only when society is ready to adapt it to its own uses. So, it is perfectly possible that drugs will be used socially for people in twenty or fifty years or indeed in five. But society will then have elaborated the techniques of controlling the thus released. It will use drugs in order to make people function more efficiently for its purposes. 
That is why I have instinctively been opposed to reformers and have always seen myself as a radical and revolutionary. As indeed I am. The reformer is the revolutionary turned back. His H turns back upon itself the moment it is in danger of going out too far—going to No-man’s land. So the reformer delivers nothing—he merely offers language and analysis to society when it turns in its adaptations to what he presents. If he were not there, it would have done it more clumsily. That is why the Soviet Union is so ponderous, clumsy, and contradictory in its reforms, its very movements. It has to be since the reformer has nothing like the social sanction here. 
But I am a revolutionary because only by revolution, and probably not political revolution, can the be set back on its heels and put into serious retreat, thus opening larger H gambits for future generations in which the S will never be as strong again? Although of course it cannot disappear until man reaches God which I suppose is the point of infinity.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/357

Modern painting. The abstract painting reduces from life, condenses from life. It is essentially a social art, a diminishing art. But non-objective painting is the swelling up, the magnifying of a moment, a microcosm, it is the magnification of something apparently tiny or insignificant. So, it seems to have no relation to anything—except perhaps the hen-tracks and scratching of various electronic particles on photographic plates under the new microscopes. And indeed why could this not be true. Somewhere within itself the brain must understand the nature of the atom, know how it moves. But this is speculation. What is important is that objective painting is the first of the arts to move from society into the . It goes beyond Time because it does not attempt to condense Time which is the essence of history, social understanding, reason, classified knowledge, etc. etc. etc. Instead it expands Time, it takes the moment and swells it into the creation. If I am ever to write more novels I shall have to take what is essentially a moment and swell it into a book.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/358

The key to Bill Styron’s nature is that he does not want a total involvement or commitment to anything or anyone. His strength and weakness as a man and an artist is in that. He was repelled by Maloney because Maloney insisted his friends go all the way with him, and Bill was not ready for that. Indeed, I would not have been either. One reason there may be few art works in the future is that we will be artists at human relations, give ourselves entirely to people in order to save them.
Category:January 31, 1955
Lipton’s Journal/January 31, 1955/359

The inter-fecundation is starting. A letter from Bob says, “Occasionally . . . I find myself leaping ahead in my mind—or arguing fiercely as if you were present.” It has to be. So many of my ideas are expansions of Bob’s ideas—in turn many of mine will be expanded by Bob. Yet, I’m ashamed to say that I was not entirely pleased when I read the above. There’s a part of me which is such a holder. I really hate to give up a part of me, and I usually give best when I will not be totally accepted (Bob was right about this). I’m so afraid things will be stolen—which of course is the way of saying things will be improved. What causes the rich man so much anguish when his joint is looted is that deep in him he suspects that the thief will enjoy his property more than he did. 
There is one other fear about Bob which is justifiable perhaps. I’m not at all sure he’s the revolutionary—he is so capable of turning back to be the mere reformer. Which means my ideas will be abused. But this is quibbling. I have jumped on a stray lack of elation. The fact is that I would have been much less delighted, much more depressed if my ideas had not stimulated him because the modest part of me knows that everything created is a dead end unless it serves to stimulate the artist and others to go beyond. And Bob can go places I cannot go, just as the same is true for me. Once I get rid of more , my may be more content with being a part of the whole instead of the whole.
Category:January 31, 1955