Shit, Saigon!

But I have never known the answers to these questions, have never asked anyone their answers. Tough posibly it -the answer- is simple: it is just low-life, some coldness in us all, some helplesness that causes us to misunderstand life when it is pure and plain, makes our existence seem like a border between two nothings, and makes us no more or less than animals who meet on the road -watchful, unforgiving, without patience or desire.

For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organised power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person. Owing to the multiplied power of numbers wich made the self negligible.Wich spent military billions against foreign enemies but would no pay for order at home. Wich permitedd savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and toughts can do. As megatons of water shape organism on the ocean floor. As tides polish stones. As winds hollow cliffs. The beautiful supermachinery opening a new life for innumerable mankind. Would you deny them the right to exist? Would you ask them to labor and go hungry while you yourself enjoyed old-fashioned Values? You -yourself are a child of this mass and a brother to all the rest Or else an ingratiate, dilettante, idiot. There, Herzog, tought Herzog, since you ask for the instance, is the way it runs.