Afraid of the unknown within

Rain, rain, rain. The horses chose to be out in the pasture nipping at the late winter grasses rather than cleaning up hay under the shelter. Patrik's right hind was still looking sore and he greeted me with a nicker when I stopped by to say hello.

The following is a guiding light from Hermann Hesse, written in Demain in 1919. Things are not so different today.

"Genuine communion," said Demian, "is a beautiful thing. But what we see flourishing everywhere is nothing of the kind. The real spirit will come from the knowledge that separate individuals have of one another and for a time it will transform the world. The community spirit at present is only a manifestation of the herd instinct. Men fly into each other's arms because they are afraid of each other--the owners are for themselves, the workers for themselves, the scholars for themselves! And why are they afraid? You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them! They all sense the rules they live by are no longer valid, that they live according to archaic laws-- neither their religion nor their morality is in any way suited to the needs of the present.

"...it will become clear that the will of humanity is nowhere--and never was--identical with the will of present-day societies, states and peoples, clubs and churches. No, what Nature wants of man stands indelibly written in the individual, in you, in me. It stood written in Jesus, it stood written in Nietzsche. These tendencies--which are the only important ones and which, of course, can assume different forms every day--will have room to breathe once the present societies have collapsed."