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p Quetism is a typical practical philosophy and mass frame of mind of the sense of wretchedness. Stunned by bourgeois society’s brutality and his own ability to lose his human nature in its web, the quietist understandably proceeds from the belief that it is futile to try to improve life. Hence the conclusion that one should not intrude too far into it. Recognition may only be given to serene spiritual tranquillity, to blissful indifference to everything, to the paralysis of the will as the general aim of all efforts. Quietism believes that happiness is acquired in the process of subversive action, transformations, cares and responsibility of any kind.

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p But various biological and social requirements hinder the attainment of the quietist ideal. For the quietist the task is, consequently, to reduce requirements to the necessary minimum, to the most elementary needs.

p But will not this self-restriction bring new suffering? At first, yes, but it will be subsequently removed, quietism replies. Only such suffering will remain as does not depend on the will of the individual who, however, is comforted by the awareness of his non-implication in suffering coming from without, and has learned to regard it from without, so to speak. For quietism it is important to cut the thousand threads of desire, to prevent the sinking of roots in life because every root forms a link to something, imposes obligations, and demands practical steps. What it wants is to minimise vital manifestations bound up with the external world.

p Essentially speaking, by saving feelings and desires, by suppressing passions it seeks to exclude actions leading to universally accepted and socially approved careers. To be a quietist in our day means to be a person with effaced social qualities, a person who has abandoned the consumer race and does not desire a social status an iota above the average level. If the quietist renounces blind belief in social myths, in official morality, in its hypocritical “sacrosanct” principles and the ensuing ideas about man’s destiny, if he does not believe in the theories of progress, evades contact with any social movement and keeps away from the extraneous ideological onslaught, it is relatively easy and even natural for him to stop desiring what capitalist society offers him. In order to be free, the quietist argues, one has to rid oneself of social roles, of alienated labour, of social activity, of affiliation to any community.  [170•* 

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p In order to facilitate the attainment of his ideal and safeguard it against excessive pressure from circumstances, the quietist has to reckon with at least some elements of surrounding reality, preferring to pursue his ideal secretly (the exceptions are, perhaps, hippies, to whom quietist aspirations are not altogether alien), to take cover behind respect for accepted symbols, consumer-hedonistic ideals and their key commandment—“be as everybody else”. For that reason the quietist attitude frequently harmonises with undisguised pragmatism, with attachment to extreme practicality. Man works somewhere and, when necessary, feigns participation in the life of society and discharges his duty to his family and friends. However, he does not immerse himself in this extraneous, visible existence and does not dissolve in social ties. Much, and sometimes very sophisticated, effort is required to obtain or rather wring the right of asylum and, at the same time, to remain at a standstill, to be a Robinson Crusoe on a densely populated island. Loneliness is turned into a virtue that is seduced only in sharp, conflict situations.

p But what will happen to mankind if all peope acquire this virtue, if they relinquish the “burden” of responsibility? However, the highest meaning of the quietist state lies precisely in being indifferent to questions of this kind, especially when the certainty exists that the mass at large is not threatened with the loss of sociality (the covert elitism of this ideal is seen in particularly sharp relief in this part of the quietist argument). Compassion for others is all that the quietist can afford, secretly believing that even this is futile; when one person wishes to help another, both are, to quote an old fable, like freezing porcupines who, wishing to be warmer, press closer to each other with the result that they prick each other more painfully with their needles. Since for the quetist there is no other way of bringing people together except by forcibly uniting them, the only road left is that of circumspectly chosen loneliness (“the human community is simply unbearable!”) and, consequently, helplessness. In this case freedom becomes cognised helplessness.

p The world, in which the quietist believes he really lives, only moves past the actual world at a tangent, past the world of people with their concerns, anxieties and stresses. (These states, of course, may be of varying significance. 172 Anxiety and stress are also created by the pursuit after success. But they may also be evoked by a sense of responsibility for the destiny of the world, or by hatred of evil.) On the contrary, the imagined world, in which the cherished part of the quetist lives and where his ideal lies, is represented as filled with calm and self-satisfaction. History passess through it as through a vacuum. In it one acquires quiet happiness, has modest joys close to prostration, and finds delight in resignation to destiny and tranquillity in the knowledge of one’s helplessness to change the world for the better. Here, with the aid of trick phrases, they easily combine what cannot be combined, and are intoxicated by understanding entirely cut off from action. Here all causes have strictly envisaged effects, opening singularly agreeable horizons entirely dependent on the imagination. Here one can calmly engage in creative work—science, art, philosophy, religion—without being a clerk to science, a priest or a paid artist. Here, at last, anger, despair, anxiety and concern are allayed, and one is not tortured by thoughts of evil, need, social programmes and responsibility. In this invented world one can turn away from the blinding light of reality. Here the quietist can take as his model a person with a passion for depressive hobbyism, a follower of the Schopenhauerian teaching of Nirvana, Somerset Maugham’s personage who fled to Hawaii, or a white-collar worker who shuns a career.

p The quietist thirsts for estrangement. Lifeless life is an end in itself, the final goal of the quietist orientation. One should not identify the quietist’s striving for repose with the analogous aim of practical medicine. Auto-training, requiring distraction from unpleasant, worrying thoughts and persistent passions, is prescribed when emotions leading to overexcitement or inhibition are accumulated. In this case autosuggested repose and the removal of neurotic reactions and mental instability are in the realm of psychotherapy. Quietism, on the other hand, is not a method of treatment but a platform demanding calm everywhere and always, chiefly when responsible decisions and actions are socially vital. It strives for serenity of mind in an epoch of radical social change, of unparalleled tension and struggle of passions, when silence and inaction have acquired a sinister meaning and represent an unambiguous choice. “Indifference," 173 Lenin wrote, “is tacit support of the strong, of those who rule.”  [173•* 

At a time when in capitalist society people are fleeing from contentedness in panic, when disappointment and doubts are imperatively demanding a quest for a way out, quietism lies in wait for victims, suggesting a ready-made and allegedly historically tested way out of wretchedness. Back to ataraxy, it says. Away with rotten reality, with obscure relations with nature, society and mankind, with instrumental actions, with the oppression of things, with mystification. But where are people to go? To the world of spiritually restored spectral links, unrestricted freedom and integral characters. All these alluring promises are associated with tranquillity, with tacit nihilism, with a departure from the bustle of life, with contemplation, spiritual equilibrium, the attraction for which allows quietism to collect an abundant haverst from the sense of wretchedness.