Homo, 99 and 44/100% Nonsapiens | Gerald B. Lorentz

Revised with new introduction by Gerald B. Lorentz.
423 pages, $18.95
file under: Misanthropology

“We live under the sword of Damocles with each moment tenuously and precariously hanging by the thread of uncertainty. What does it profit a man to sweat and groan for a future that may terminate in the atomic rubble of the next moment? Why build a brave new world atop an active volcano?” - Gerald B. Lorentz

In 2007, Gerald B. Lorentz was 91 years old and had retired to Hawaii with his wife. He’d lived a full life travelling the world, running various businesses and devoting himself to the study of history and the animal known by science as homo sapiens. At five years of age he began to question Santa Claus, and found the stories to be bunk. From there he had an incessant drive to dissect not only the mechanics of the physical world, but the mechanics of human society. Born in 1915, he would see massive shifts in society, and live through some of the most devastating and technologically astounding events. His keen sense of reason time and again lead him to a conclusion that man was not “wise” at all as the binomial nomenclature would have us believe. The near totality of the human was just as vicious, cunning and brutish as any other animal. His youthful skepticism of the traditional holiday myths developed into something harder. He writes, “History clearly proves that man is a plunderer, a killer, and a hypocrite. He cannot face the reality of his own despicable nature. Even when he kills he fancies that he performs a service to God or country. Capitalism satisfies all the predatory instincts natural to man in the economic purlieu; that is, satisfies his need to plunder, prey, defend; and to mask his predations with euphemisms and hypocorisms...” He spent time in London, Paris, Moscow, Istanbul, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, etc., and his position as radio/electronics officer left him with 90% of his time to study, reflect and dissect. In 1985 this life experience and mental conflagration culminated in the first edition of this, his magnum opus. In it he spells out and elaborates on his unorthodox and social Darwinian view of man. He devastatingly tackles the major human affairs one by one. His dedication is to truth with no consideration for phony morals and political correctness that cause many with socially heretical thoughts to remain quiet. Describing the work he said, “The essence of this book is an aversion to ignorance and a craving for unlimited knowledge.” Politics, Economics, Law, Religion, Science, Art and Race each successively come under his mental calipers and pliers. Eventually this culminates into a tearing down of the greatest human myth, that of Free Will. Lorentz does not stop at mere conclusions, feigning academic disinterest or fearing disapproval, he firmly submits resolutions. His book was met with little public acclaim, though it did become quite a sought after object by a certain type of thinker. Twenty-two years after publication Lorentz was approached for a new edition of his book, and it was one of the last public pronouncements that he made that his great work would not forever disappear into the nothingness. He died shortly after the agreement was solidified, and now APOP Records and Underworld Amusements have joined to finally republish it revised and with a new foreword and afterword by the author. It will stand as his vision of the world unvarnished. It is a view that will be rejected as too cynical or outrageous by most, certainly by the 99 44/100% of humans that are indeed unwise.