Listen, Little Man: Your heritage is a burning diamond in your hand.
“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, statesman and philosophers. They give you your future but don’t ask about your past.
You are heir to a dreadful past. Your heritage is a burning diamond in your hand. that is what I tell you.
- Every physician, shoemaker, mechanic or educator must know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and make his living. For some decades, you have begun to play a governing role on this earth. Iris on your thinking and your actions that the future of humanity depends. But your teachers and masters do not tell you how you really think and are; nobody dares to voice the one criticism of you which could make you capable of governing your own fate. You are ‘free’ only in one sense: free from education in governing your life yourself, free from self-criticism.
I have never heard you complain: ‘You promote me to be the future master of myself and the world, but you don’t tell me how one is to be the master of oneself, and you don’t tell me the mistakes in my thinking and my actions.
You let men in power assume power ‘for the Little Man’. But you yourself remain silent.
See yourself as you really are. Listen to what none of your leaders and representatives dares tell you: 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!
“What right do you have to tell me things?” I can see this question in your apprehensive look. I hear this question from your impertinent mouth, Little Man. You are afraid to look at yourself, you are afraid of criticism, Little Man, just as you are afraid of the power they promise you. You would not know how to use this power. You dare not think that you ever might experience your self differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night. You despise yourself Little Man. You say: “Who am I to have an opinion of my own, to determine my own life and to declare the world to be mine?” You are right: Who are you to make a claim to your life?