Henry Miller on Art, War, and the Future of Mankind

Henry Miller’s essay links World War II to wider changes in war, technology, society, and art. He treats the future as something people make, not something fixed, and returns to the idea that creation and change are constant.

Reading notes

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• Miller says the past is constantly reconstructed, while the future is continuously created.
• He sees Europe’s cultural era as ending and the technician’s era beginning.
• He argues that total war makes everyone involved and pushes people toward a fuller life.
• He says the war will reveal that nations are made of individuals, not masses.
• He warns that power will become a greater problem and that inventive genius can be used for destructive ends.
• He rejects racial superiority and calls for real brotherhood across skin color.
• He imagines a future of mobile cities and freer movement across the earth.
• He defines art as a step toward reality and says people should make themselves works of art.
• He predicts that books will eventually disappear as a medium.
• He says new forms of communication require new desires and describes the advance as a fight from within outward.
• He criticizes politicians, religious figures, scholars, and advertisers for the messages they repeat.
• He ends by saying Beauty and Truth belong to everyone and that all is creation, change, flux, and metamorphosis.