The Last Man Blinks

Fifty Year Old News Printed Like It Is Original

Can modern people read? This well established principle was printed in civil defense comic books aimed at children in 1954.

You have to wonder if there is another motive for this bizarre, discordant press release. You can't help but wonder. Is somebody planning something?

It was common knowledge amongst school age children fifty years ago.

Is this feeble, grasping attempt to understand the grownup world where nuclear weapons are real and civil defense is a necessity the expression of the last man?

"The time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself. Behold, I show you the last man.
     'What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?' thus asks the last man, and blinks.
     The earth has become small, and on it hops the last man, who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea; the last man lives longest.
     'We have invented happiness,'say the last men, and they blink. They have left the regions where it was hard to live, for one needs warmth. One still loves one's neighbor and rubs against him, for one needs warmth...
     One still works, for work is a form of entertainment. But one is careful lest the entertainment be too harrowing. One no longer becomes poor or rich: both require too much exertion. Who still wants to rule? Who obey? Both require too much exertion.
     No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same: whoever feels different goes voluntarily into a madhouse.
     'Formerly, all the world was mad,' say the most refined, and they blink...
     One has one's little pleasure for the day and one's little pleasure for the night: but one has a regard for health.
     'We have invented happiness,' say the last men, and they blink."

- Thus spoke Zarathustra, Friedrich Nietszche