Collapse is the easier path. It presents itself as realism, as acceptance of the inevitable, as the mature recognition that higher standards no longer apply. The man who collapses continues to live, to work, to seek pleasure. He simply ceases to measure himself by anything that transcends the conditions of the age. In doing so he becomes a product of those conditions.
The differentiated individual refuses this path. The refusal is not based on optimism about the outer world. The diagnosis of the age remains severe. The refusal is based on the decision that the higher measure does not depend for its validity on external success or on the presence of supporting institutions. Even when the forms have fallen, the principle remains. To abandon the principle is to complete the work of the age inside oneself.
This refusal must be concrete. It appears in the resistance to habits that dissolve attention, to relationships that pull downward, to ambitions that require the surrender of rank, to the soft resignation that treats every demand of the higher type as unrealistic. Each small surrender accumulates. The man who watches himself carefully will see the points at which collapse begins to offer itself as relief.
The age will call the refusal arrogance or delusion. It has no language for a man who continues to stand when the surrounding structures have ceased to stand. The differentiated individual does not need the language of the age. He needs only the continued capacity to recognize the difference between remaining upright and allowing himself to be leveled. That capacity is the refusal made active.