I am, of course, notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
And my car back then was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all : fossil fuels. . . When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey. . . Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face a cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
Our close cousins the gorillas and orangs and chimps and gibbon apes have gotten along just fine all this time while eating raw vegetable matter, whereas we not only prepare hot meals but have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years, mainly by making thermodyanimic whoopee with fossil fuels. The Englishman Michael Faraday built the first electric generator only a hundred and seventy-two years ago (this was written in 2005). The German Karl Benz built the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine only a hundred and nineteen years ago. The first oil well in the USA, now a dry hole, was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin L. Drake only a hundred and forty-five years ago. The American Wright brothers, of course, built and flew the first airplane only a hundred and one years ago. It was powered by gasoline. . . You want to talk about irrestible whoopee? A booby trap. Fossil fuels, so easily set alight! Yes, and we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and drops and chunks of them. All lights are about to go out. No more electricity. All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery. And nobody can do a thing about it. It's too late in the game. Don't spoil the party, but here the truth: We have squandered our planet's resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn't going to be one.
I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man. When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!" A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit. . . I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family. Now, you take George and Laura Bush, who imagine themselves as a brave, clean-cut little couple. They are surrounded by an enormous extended family, what we should all have - I mean judges, senators, newspaper editors, lawyers and bankers. They are not alone. That they are members of an extended family is one reason they are so comfortable. And I would really, over the long run, hope America would find some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families - a large group of people they could call on for help.
© Kurt Vonnegut
And my car back then was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all : fossil fuels. . . When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey. . . Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face a cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.
Our close cousins the gorillas and orangs and chimps and gibbon apes have gotten along just fine all this time while eating raw vegetable matter, whereas we not only prepare hot meals but have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years, mainly by making thermodyanimic whoopee with fossil fuels. The Englishman Michael Faraday built the first electric generator only a hundred and seventy-two years ago (this was written in 2005). The German Karl Benz built the first automobile powered by an internal combustion engine only a hundred and nineteen years ago. The first oil well in the USA, now a dry hole, was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Edwin L. Drake only a hundred and forty-five years ago. The American Wright brothers, of course, built and flew the first airplane only a hundred and one years ago. It was powered by gasoline. . . You want to talk about irrestible whoopee? A booby trap. Fossil fuels, so easily set alight! Yes, and we are presently touching off nearly the very last whiffs and drops and chunks of them. All lights are about to go out. No more electricity. All forms of transportation are about to stop, and the planet Earth will soon have a crust of skulls and bones and dead machinery. And nobody can do a thing about it. It's too late in the game. Don't spoil the party, but here the truth: We have squandered our planet's resources, including air and water, as though there were no tomorrow, so now there isn't going to be one.
I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything. What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn't get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It's because most of us don't have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it's a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it's a man. When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it's about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they're really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: "You are not enough people!" A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It's a terribly vulnerable survival unit. . . I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family. Now, you take George and Laura Bush, who imagine themselves as a brave, clean-cut little couple. They are surrounded by an enormous extended family, what we should all have - I mean judges, senators, newspaper editors, lawyers and bankers. They are not alone. That they are members of an extended family is one reason they are so comfortable. And I would really, over the long run, hope America would find some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families - a large group of people they could call on for help.
© Kurt Vonnegut
:)
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