He will feign optimism.

He will feign optimism. The occidentotic seeks ease. He lives in the moment, although not in the sense the philosophers intend. If his car is running and he looks debonair, nothing troubles him. If in some distant age, concern for offspring, bread, clothing, and provisions held Sa'di back from spiritual wayfaring, the occidentotic, with his head submerged in his own fodder, will do nothing for the sake of anyone else.

He doesn't go looking for any headaches for himself, and he easily shrugs things off. Because he has figured out just what his job is, because he doesn't take an unconsidered step, because he sees every action as the product of an equation, he doesn't stick his nose into others' affairs, let alone feel concern for their welfare. The occidentotic normally has no specialty.

He is jack-of-all-trades and master of none- But because he is schooled, literate, and perhaps educated, he knows to use polysyllables and to bluff his way into every company. Perhaps once he had a specialty, but he has seen that in this country one cannot, with a single specialty, grasp the horn of plenty. Therefore he necessarily has involved himself in other lines of work.

He is just like the old women in a household who in the course of lifetimes of experience have learned a little about everything, although their knowledge is limited by the perspective of illiterate women. The occidentotic too knows a little about everything, and his knowledge is limited by the perspective of the occidentotic.

He has tabs on the topics of the day-what will be useful on television, what will be useful on the educational commission and at the seminar, what will be useful for the mass circulation newspapers, what will be useful for talks at the club. The occidentotic has no character- He is a thing without authenticity. His person, his home, and his words convey nothing in particular, and everything in general. It is not that he is cosmopolitan, that the world is his home.

He is at home nowhere rather than everywhere. He is an amalgam of singleness without character and character without singularity. Because he has no security, he dissembles. In the very act of being so polite and sociable, he mistrusts whom he is speaking to. And because suspicion dominates our age, he must never open his heart to anyone. The only palpable characteristic he has is fear.

In the West individuals' characters are sacrificed to their field of specialization, but the occidentotic has neither.