“The most terrifying negation will always crumble before the smallest consistent, pristine affirmation.” – Arnold Kunst

“The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

22 October

We're all beautiful. Each one of us came off the assembly line perfect. Babies have the uncanny capacity to reduce all the rest of us, even the most haughty,

right down to their level as we all smile and say, “coo-chee-coo,” and babies do it without the least effort. It's only later that we learn that we're lacking here, and - oh my God! - lacking there too!
That process starts slow. You’re 3 or 4, standing with your mommy in the check-out line at Safeway and then say, in a loud, carrying voice when all ambient noise drops down to nothing, "MOMMY, WHY IS THAT MAN SO FAT?" And in just a few watershed moments, outside the store, you are taught things about the limits of curiosity, for example, that are only partially true but which, unless you are particularly courageous later in life, you'll never, ever question. And the next thing you know, a beautiful 14-year old girl will decide to starve herself because she wants to be beautiful - which she already is.
No wonder Jesus Christ said it’d be better for a man to be drowned in the sea than, as he put it, ‘to scandalize one of these little ones’ – surely we have to protect the fragile self image of each one of them.