But in our age of emptiness, tragedies are relatively rare. Or if they are written, the tragic aspect is the very fact that human life is so empty, a… - Rollo May

"... günümüzde radyo programlarının kapanışında sarf edilen tuhaf bir cümle var: "Dinlediğiniz için teşekkürler"... Alkışı kabul etmek ayrı, fakat dinleyiciye sizi dinleyip eğlenme lütfunu bahşettiği için teşekkür etmek bambaşka bir şey. Bu durum verilen hizmete atfedilecek değer yahut değersizliğin tüketici veya alıcının keyfine kaldığı anlamına geliyor... birçok insan davranışlarının değerini davranışın kendisiyle değil de bu davranışın nasıl kabul gördüğüyle ölçüyor. (S. 59-60)

Modern esere altında yatan ezoterik şifreyi bilmeden bakan çoğu insan, hatta zeki olanlar dahi hiçbir şey anlayamaz. [Mondrian, Pollock]... yetenekli sanatçıların kendilerini ancak bu denli sınırlı bir dille ifade edebilmeleri toplumumuza ilişkin çok önemli bir ipucu vermiyor mu? (S. 65)

"Hayat aynı anda hem kendini yinelemekle hem de aşmaya çalışmakla meşguldür." diye ifade eder Simone de Beauvoir etik üzerine kaleme aldığı kitabında; "tek yaptığı kendini idame ettirmekse eğer, yaşamak ölmenin bir çeşididir ve insanın varlığı tuhaf bir bitki örtüsünden farksızlaşır..." (S. 135)

[Kafese Kapatılan Adam hikayesi] (S. 139-141)"

Creativity is the result of a struggle between vitality and form. As anyone who has tried to write a sonnet or scan poetry, is aware, the forms ideally do not take away from the creativity but may add to it.

The dispersion of the daimonic by means of impersonality has serious and destructive effects. In New York City, it is not regarded as strange that the anonymous human beings secluded in single-room occupancies are so often connected with violent crime and drug addiction. Not that the anonymous individual in New York is alone: he sees thousands of other people every day, and he knows all the famous personalities as they come, via TV, into his single room. He knows their names, their smiles, their idiosyncrasies; they bandy about in a “we're-all-friends-together” mood on the screen which invites him to join them and subtly assumes that he does join them. He knows them all. But he himself is never known. His smile is unseen; his idiosyncrasies are important to no-body; his name is unknown. He remains a foreigner pushed on and off the subway by tens of thousands of other anonymous foreigners. There is a deeply depersonalizing tragedy involved in this. The most severe punishment Yahweh could inflict on his people was to blot out their name. “Their names,” Yahweh proclaims, “shall be wiped out of the book of the living.”

This anonymous man's never being known, this aloneness, is transformed into loneliness, which may then become daimonic possession. For his self-doubts — “I don't really exist since I can't affect anyone” — eat away at his innards; he lives and breathes and walks in a loneliness which is subtle and insidious. It is not surprising that he gets a gun and trains it on some passer-by — also anonymous to him. And it is not surprising that the young men in the streets, who are only anonymous digits in their society, should gang together in violent attacks to make sure their assertion is felt.

Loneliness and its stepchild, alienation, can become forms of demon possession. Surrendering ourselves to the impersonal daimonic pushes us into an anonymity which is also impersonal; we serve nature’s gross purposes on the lowest common denominator, which o