“The exalted common man is slave of instinct, slave of the
herd, slave of superstition, slave of magical gadgets,
the embodiment of evil, and the testing ground of every
mass folly the devil can invent.
He is the organ of the accumulated smut and sneakery
of ten thousand generations of weaseling souls, the spirit
unleavened earth, the genetic end product of a long run
of inferior and infernal adaptions, the survivor of all
known forms of needless stupidity, beastiality, and
knavery. His power to rise up and repeat his pattern
endlessly is immense and it has been so far, nearly futile.
His most colossal achievement is his ability, in spite of
the doltish millennia out of which he has grown like a
fungus, to keep producing specimens of men who give
the whole breed a possibly exaggerated cast of
hopefulness.
Had this creature more intellect than base impulses,
or even a tendency to examine his personality for the
profit there might be in it, rather than to examine the
pockets of his neighbor, he would have triumphed
long ago”. Philip Wylie. “Generation of Vipers”[1942]
What can I say? Islander