Whitcomb's Cocktail Crowd -familiar

Robert Whitcomb's column today reads as if it were written the morning after one of those horrid cocktail parties - where you get to meet conspicuously " successful " people whose conversation tells any half-sensitive , cultured listener that being rude crude -often drunken -jackass - is no obstacle to " higher achievement " in a madly materialistic society.


This type stopped reading serious books decades ago. Mr. Whitcomb mentioned encountering this type while on jury duty . All Babbits ! And the allusion to the Sinclair Lewis classic would go right over their bloated heads .

Mr. Whitcomb just cannot admit that the capitalist way of life - minus liberal humanist values - mass produces the same sorry types generation after generation.

How to save your soul from this mess ? Stop thinking that millions of lemmings cannot be wrong about the good things in life.

Find your true self in SOLITUDE -not in the company of corrupt greedy - and mentally lazy - philistines.

Dr. Timothy Leary's message is as valid as ever : " We are living in a highly organized insane asylum ... " Tune in , turn on , drop out ! ".

No, I don't recommend LSD . But if you " tune in " to your real self -not your corporate false self - your cocktail party self - you might find a creative way to " drop out " without starting fires in abandoned warehouses .

The philistines don't read because serious reading is more and more impossible for the egotist. It demand that he or she get out of the self. For someone like Einstein the discovery that the universe was independent and scornful of human egotism was a liberating experience. The egotist, however , is often terrified of solitude -a condition in which inner emptiness is revealed.

The Real Person will have no need for empty cocktail chatter - and less and less need for the cocktail.