In a powerful passage, Joseph the journal keeper links his violent outbursts to the unbearable contradictions of modern life. Brainwashed into believing that each of us is an individual of inestimable value with an individual destiny, that there is no limit to what we can attain, we set off in quest of our own individual greatness. Failing to find it, we begin to “hate immoderately and punish ourselves and one another immoderately. The fear of lagging [behind] pursues and maddens us … It makes an inner climate of darkness. And occasionally there is a storm of hate and wounding rain out of us.”
