Baldwin - Sensuality, Self, and the Fountain of Life

"To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread....Something very sinister happens to the people of a country when they begin to distrust their own reactions as deeply as they do here, and become as joyless as they have become.  It is this individual uncertainty on the part of white American men and women, this inability to renew themselves at the fountain of their own lives, that makes the discussion, let alone elucidation, of any conundrum - that is, any reality - so supremely difficult.  The person who distrusts himself has no touchstone for reality - for this touchstone can be only oneself.  Such a person interposes between himself  and reality nothing less than a labyrinth of attitudes. And these attitudes, furthermore, thought eh person is usually unaware of it (is unaware of so much!) are historical and political attitudes.  They do not relate to the present any more than they relate to the person."