Collective Conscious

Again from The Grapes of Wrath:

The west­ern land, ner­vous under the begin­ning change. The West­ern States, ner­vous as horses before a thun­der storm. The great own­ers, ner­vous, sens­ing a change, know­ing noth­ing of the nature of the change. The great own­ers, strik­ing at the imme­di­ate thing, the widen­ing gov­ern­ment, the grow­ing labor unity; strik­ing at new taxes, at plans; not know­ing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and sim­ple — the causes are a hunger in a stom­ach, mul­ti­plied a mil­lion times; a hunger in a sin­gle soul, hunger for joy and some secu­rity, mul­ti­plied a mil­lion times; mus­cles and mind aching to grow, to work, to cre­ate, mul­ti­plied a mil­lion times. The last clear def­i­nite func­tion of man — mus­cles aching to work, minds aching to cre­ate beyond the sin­gle need — this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put some­thing of Man­self, and to Man­self take back some­thing of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard mus­cles from the lift­ing, to take the clear lines and form from con­ceiv­ing. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inor­ganic in the uni­verse, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his con­cepts, emerges ahead of his accom­plish­ments. This you may say of man — when the­o­ries change and crash, when schools, philoso­phies, when nar­row dark alleys of thought, national, reli­gious, eco­nomic, grow and dis­in­te­grate, man reaches, stum­bles for­ward, painfully, mis­tak­enly some­times. Hav­ing stepped for­ward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. Tis you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plum­met out of the black planes on the mar­ket place, when pris­on­ers are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bod­ies drain filth­ily in the dust. You may know it in this way. I the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-​​forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live — for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great own­ers live — for every lit­tle beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know — fear the time when Man­self will not suf­fer and die for a con­cept, for this one qual­ity is the foun­da­tion of Man­self, and this one qual­ity if man, dis­tinc­tive in the universe.