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Chapter 31: Democracy Means Mediocracy

It does not matter what you do. What matters is how you do it - of your own accord, with your own vision, with your own love. Then whatever you touch becomes gold.

In what way do you envisage democracy playing a part in your communes?

The question is a little complex. Democracy is not the highest goal. It is better than dictatorial regimes, it is better than monarchies, but it is not the end of the journey - because democracy basically means government by the people, of the people, for the people, but the people are retarded. So let us say: government by the retarded, for the retarded, of the retarded.


I want a government by the people of merit.

And merit is a very rare quality.


The same is the situation in Soviet Russia, and everywhere else in the world. The Russian government does not allow its scientists, poets, or other geniuses to receive the Nobel Prize, for the simple reason that by receiving the Nobel Prize they become world famous. And a genius has no business becoming world famous; he should do his work.

The greatest physicist today is in imprisonment in Soviet Russia. The greatest physicist perhaps of all the ages, who has gone deeper than Albert Einstein - Sakharov - is serving a life sentence in Siberia. His only crime was that he refused to obey the Soviet government, and accepted the Nobel Prize.

Now, the people who are ruling the Soviet Union are just third rate. None of them has shown any genius - Sakharov alone has as much as the whole stupid lot - but they have power. And the best physicist, who can contribute to the world immensely, is simply rotting in Siberia.

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