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win.:
9
February, 1932
I seldom go to the movies, but last week a certain famous movie was being shown in Lawrence, second showing, and my wife and I argued and cudgeled our brains trying to remember whether we had seen it or not. We never did decide. If we had seen it, it must have made a very strong impression! Try remembering the titles and plots of a score of movies, and you will realize what a dent they make on your consciousness. Too many movies, even if they were good, and there's no way of making so many movies good. So I commonly hear, "No, I don't care about seeing that. I'm pretty sure I saw it once."
When Macbeth comes to the city, do we say, "Oh, no, I saw that once?" Yet I think we would if Shakespeare had promoted a drama corporation and had turned out 20,000 plays in 20 years. When I hear Brahm's First Symphony I really do not turn the radio off, saying, "I've heard that before," because Brahms wrote only four symphonies, all supremely good, and not a thousand, all supremely bad. "Too much and too poor" describes too much of our cultural and recreational provender, but the stuff takes our precious time. Indulging in it, the people remind me of cattle eat' ing straw in a hard winter, working full time, but losing weight steadily.
THE emulative spirit is of course a destroyer of leisure. We must keep up with the Jones's; and here they are, flaunting their new cars and fur coats and nylons before us, cheapening everything we have, sow ing in our hearts the seeds of envy and malice where Christian brother'
hood ought to reign. Modern cars, radios, movies and advertising make us more conscious of what they have.
I wish the Jones's would move to New Caledonia or Borneo, for they are a worse nuisance than the Kalli' kaks, worse even than the bureaucrats — or do I go too far? The Jones's have destroyed more wealth than all the tornadoes, cyclones, floods, Japanese beetles and grasshoppers in America, have caused more unhappiness than love, divorce, influenza and communism. We see this numerous, ubiquitous outfit wherever we go, and they always make us unhappy, and force us to work when we don't want to. Why doesn't the F. B. I. rid us of this family, so that we won't need to keep up with anyone?
According to capitalist standards of morality, leisure is a sin anyhow. We must succeed, and we don't suc' ceed by enjoying leisure. I can imagine a typical ambitious father saying goodbye to his son who after graduation is going out to seek his fortune. "My dear son, you are on your own now, but I hope you will hold fast to the traditions of your father. Remember that life is real, life is carnest, and success is its goal. Don't ever do anything merely because you want to, for that won't lead you anywhere. It is true that you might enjoy it, but forget about that.
"If you are to succeed you must do mostly hard work, the things that you don't want to do; and if you do such things for fifty years you may be a very famous man, perhaps a millionaire or a congressman or a diplomat or a writer of books; or at any rate you may pile up enough of