Facts, like living things, have a value in and of themselves
and demand respect. Beware those people who use them as means to an end and
dismiss them as soon as they are done using them.
They say it is not the destination but the journey. And yet
we struggle through traffic to wait in lines at the airport, only to go through
demeaning searches and then be shoved into undersized seats. We have
compromised too much, and so are unable to enjoy what it is we get.
This is the sum total of the knowledge I have obtained in my
thirty years of work experience: The ranting of an idiot, overheard by an
intern and reported to his superior, will always spell trouble for the honest
worker.
Only the very stupid are ever certain of anything.
Most animals sleep in a hole in the ground or hanging from a
tree. Man alone has made for himself an elaborate resting place. And yet he is
the only one to have developed the alarm clock to rouse himself from it, the
only species to spend sixteen or more hours of each day away from it.
In the same way that youth is wasted on the young,
retirement is wasted on the old. We should not grow old but young, to gradually
increase into a naïve idealism rather than calcify into cynicism and
disillusionment, to end our lives in the womb rather than the tomb. Our
eyesight slowly growing keener, our skin becoming more sensitive, our appetite
increasing as we rush to feel experience, keen in the knowledge that we truly
must seize the day.
The world belongs to those with a single idea who are able
to repeat it unendingly. You may charitably call them single-minded, but they
are in truth simple minded.
Where does alienation most manifest itself in our society?
Whenever science, government, or business develops a really bad idea and we
just shrug and say: “That is progress. It is unavoidable.”
Man has always sought to be a part of something larger and
so has tried to change himself in order to fit that larger thing. What he
seldom realizes is that he is a part of all that is merely by being
uncompromisingly himself.
It takes a brave man to go to war, but it takes a nation of
cowards to send him.
We tend to want to remake the world in our own image which
why it is best to seek our own happiness. The best gift we can give others is
to be happy.
The big events of our youth have profound influences on the
rest of our lives. Similarly, the earliest events of our history (e.g. Troy or
the American Revolution) play a major role in our society.
We build elaborate theories on a single narrow idea, like a
pyramid balanced on a tin can.
In a sick society, no institution is untouched. No
psychiatrist can diagnose the disease without being disbarred, no politician
can point to the truth without being shouted down or gunned down. The poet,
musician, filmmaker, or artist who attempts to define the problem will be
ignored, without a source of income to have his work reach the masses.
No comments:
Post a Comment