You must come to realize that you made your little men your own oppressors

 

They call you "Little Man", "Common Man"; they say a new era has begun, the "Era of the Common Man". It isn't you who says so, Little Man. It is they, the Vice Presidents of great nations, promoted labour leaders, repentant sons of bourgeois families, statesmen and philosophers. They give you your future but don't ask about your past.

You let men in power assume power "for the Little Man". But you yourself remain silente. You give men in power to represent you. Only too late do you realize that again and again you are being defrauded.

You are a "little, common man". Understand the double meaning of these words: "little", and "common".

Don't run. Have the courage to look at yourself!

You know Hitler better than Nietzsche, Napoleon better than Pestalozzi. A ling means more to you than a Sigmund Freud.

This is why I am afraid of you, Little Man, deadly afraid. For on you dependes the fate of humanity. I am afraid of you because there is nothing you flee as much from as yourself. You are sick, very sick, Little Man. It is not your fault. But it is your responsability to rid yourselg of this sickness. You would have long since shaken off you opressor had you not tolerated oppression and often actively supported it. No police force in the world would be powerful enough to suppress you if you had only a mite of self-respect in practical everyday living, if you knew, deep down, that without you life would not go on for even an hour. Did your "liberator" tell yout that?

I am not a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, a Mormon, Polygamist, Homosexual or boxer.

I embrace my wife because I love her and desire her and not because I happen to have a marriage certificate or because I am sexually starved.

I do not beat children. I do not play bridge and do not give parties  order to spread my theories. 

Then I became a natural scientist and a psychiatrist, and I learned to see how very sick you are and how dangerous you are in your sickness, and not an external power, which, every hour and evey minute, suppresses you, even though there may be no external pressure. You would have overcome the tyrants long ago had you been alive inside and healthy. Your opressors come from your own ranks as in the past they came from the upper strata Society. They are even littler than you are, Little Man. For it takes a good dose of littleness to know your misery from experience and then to use this knowledge to suppress you still better, still harder.

You have no sense organ for the truly great man. His way of being, his suffering, his longing, his raging, his fight for you are alien to you. You cannot understand that there are men and women who are incapable od suppressing or exploiting you.

Wilhelm Reich

1897 - 1957