A Really Swinging Human

Now, what I would call a really swinging human being
Is a person who lives on two levels at once
He’s able to live on the level of being his ordinary ego, his everyday
personality
And play his role in life, and to observe all the rules, and so on
That go with that
But if he is only on that level
If he’s only playing that kind of thing, and thinks that’s all there is
It becomes a drag. He starts being the kind of person who feels that he’s just
got to go on surviving
It’s terribly important to go on surviving; to live
And he works at that
And his children learn the same attitude from him
And he says, «Well, I’ve got to survive because I’ve got all these children I
have to support,» and so on, and so forth
And then they take the same attitude, and they breed up children,
and they feel compulsive about supporting them, because they’ve got to go on
And so nobody really has any fun
It’s just… «Ungh! Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!»
You’ve got to make this thing. You see?
And you don’t have to
See, whenever I get somebody who comes to me and says, «I really can’t go on.
I have to commit suicide,»
I say, «Well, that’s entirely your right. There’s really no reason why you
should go on, and if you want to commit suicide, do it.»
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Of course, this reduces anxiety; when they feel free to commit suicide they
don’t really have to commit suicide so much
(Laughter)
You know, you can commit partial suicide
(Laughter)