Grange

I misread this passage from the intro to Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer a few months ago, but I often think of it at social gatherings.

"Miller writing about his little community at Big Sur frowns on the idea of community itself. 'To create community and what is a nation, or a people, without a sense of community - there must be a common purpose. Even here in Big Sur, where the oranges are ready to blossom forth, there is no common purpose, no common effort. There is a remarkable neighborliness, but no community spirit. We have a Grange, as do other rural communities, but what is a 'Grange' in the life of man? The real workers are outside the Grange.'"

Is it post-apocalyptic, self-authenticating 'art' rambling? Is it misanthropy? Is it failed liberalism? Is it egomania? Is it all out true?

I don't know. As a balance though, here are some quotes from Kierkegaard's Either/Or... a book which I think may have shaped much of my late adolescent psyche.

"The person who is deceived by the world can still hope that he will not be disappointed some other time under other circumstances, but the person who deceives himself is continually deceived even if he flees to the farthest limits of the world, because he cannot escape himself."

...and another...

"Most people are subjective towards themselves and objective towards everyone else, sometimes frightfully objective, but the task is precisely to be objective to themselves and subjective towards all others."