Reasons for not keeping a notebook: 1) the ambiguity of the reader

In the American Metaphysical, reality is always material reality, hard, resistant, unformed, impenetrable, and unpleasant.

Ideology is not the product of thought; it is the habit or the ritual of showing respect for certain formulas to which, for various reasons having to do with emotional safety, we have very strong ties of whose meaning and consequences in actuality we have no clear understanding.

We who are liberal and progressive know that the poor are our equals in every sense except that of being equal to us.

Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood.

A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly.

This desire to fashion, to shape, a self and a life has all but gone from a contemporary culture whose emphasis, paradoxically enough, is so much on self.