April 16, 2004
Henry Miller on Robotic Murder
Today the individual is virtually extinct. Today we have the robot, end product of the machine age. Man functioning as a cog in a machine over which he has no control. The gat which the gangster employs, secure in the upholstered fortress of his limousine, is symbolic of the emotional vacuum in which murders are now perpetrated...
Today whole populations are driven from their homes or wiped out, and the world, if moved, is powerless to invervene. Today the suffering of millions has less power to ravage us than the burning of a zoo. The world is paralyzed with fear and dread. The man of long range calculation, the deified robot, is in the saddle. It is his role, his mission, apparently, to destroy that which is powerless to destroy itself, namely society.
Nothing that comes to pass these next few years will surprise me in the least. When the white American killer rises up on his hind legs and begins to spit and claw, Europe, that age-old scene of carnage, will seem like a haven of peace. When the dykes give way, and they are giving way fast, nothing will be too fantastic or devilish -- to unspeakable, in a word -- for us to enact.
-- Henry Miller
The World of Sex, 1959