Read He Who Shapes for Free Online

ought to supervise those things more closely. I'm thinking
    of changing his school."
    "Again?"
    "Maybe. I'll see. The headmaster is going to call me this
    afternoon. I don't like to keep shuffling him, but I do want him
    to finish school in one piece."
    "A kid can't grow up without an accident or two.
    Ifs-statistics."
    "Statistics   aren't   the   same   thing   as   destiny,   Bennie.
    Everybody makes his own."
    "Statistics or destiny?"
    "Both, I guess."
    "I think that if something's going to happen, it's going to
    happen."
    "I don't. I happen to think that the human will, backed by a
    sane mind can exercise some measure of control over events. If
    I didn't think so, I wouldn't be in the racket I'm in."
    "The world's a machineyou knowcause, effect. Statistics
    do imply the prob"
    "The human mind is not a machine, and I do not know cause
    and effect. Nobody does."
    "You have a degree in chemistry, as I recall. You're a
    scientist, Doc."
    "So I'm a Trotskyite deviationist," he smiled, stretching,
    "and you were once a ballet teacher." He got to his feet and
    picked up his coat.
    "By the way, Miss DeVille called, left a message, She said:
    'How about St. Moritz?' "
    "Too ritzy," he decided aloud. "It's going to be Davos."
    Because the suicide bothered him more than it should have,
    Render closed the door to his office and turned off the windows
    and turned on the phonograph. He put on the desk light only.
    How has the quality of human life been changed, he wrote,
    since the beginnings of the industrial revolution?
    He picked up the paper and re-read the sentence. It was the
    topic he had been asked to discuss that coming Saturday. As
    was typical in such cases he did not know what to say because
    he had too much to say, and only an hour to say it in.
    He got up and began to pace the office, now filled with
    Beethoven's Eighth Symphony.
    "The power to hurt," he said, snapping on a lapel
    microphone and activating his recorder, "has evolved in a
    direct relationship to technological advancement." His imagi-
    nary audience grew quiet. He smiled. "Man's potential for
    working simple mayhem has been multiplied by mass-produc-
    tion; his capacity for injuring the psyche through personal con-
    tacts has expanded in an exact ratio to improved communica-
    tion facilities. But these are all matters of common knowledge,
    and are not the things I wish to consider tonight. Rather, I
    should like to discuss what I choose to call autopsychomimesis
    the self-generated anxiety complexes which on first scrutiny
    appear quite similar to classic patterns, but which actually rep-
    resent radical dispersions of psychic energy. They are peculiar
    to our times . . ."
    He paused to dispose of his cigar and formulate his next
    words.
    "Autopsychomimesis," he thought aloud, "a self-perpetuated
    imitation   complexalmost   an   attention-getting   affair.A
    jazzman, for example, who acted hopped-up half the time, even
    though he had never used an addictive narcotic and only dimly
    remembered anyone who hadbecause all the stimulants and
    tranquilizers of today are quite benign. Like Quixote, he
    aspired after a legend when his music alone should have been
    sufficient outlet for his tensions.
    "Or my Korean War Orphan, alive today by virtue of the Red
    Cross and UNICEF and foster parents whom he never met. He
    wanted a family so badly that he made one up. And what then?
    He hated his imaginary father and he loved his imaginary
    mother quite dearlyfor he was a highly intelligent boy, and he
    too longed after the half-true complexes of tradition. Why?
    "Today, everyone is sophisticated enough to understand the
    time-honored patterns of psychic disturbance. Today, many of
    the reasons for those disturbances have been removednot as
    radically as my now-adult war orphan's, but with as remarkable
    an effect. We are living in a neurotic past.Again, why? Be-
    cause our present times are geared to physical health, security,
    and well-being. We have