...for all of its innovations this kind of satire..

by: Garry Trudeau fromtype: commencement address context: “Colby College” date: 1981

“['Saturday Night Live's] screw-you [humor] .. adroitly mocks society's victims.

...For all its innovations this kind of satire tells society's nebbishes that they are right about themselves, that they are nobodies, that to be so un-hip as to be disadvantaged, to be ignorant, to be physically infirm, or black, or even female is to invite contempt.

...What worries me about Slash and Burn humor, and the larger society which has spawned it, is that it reflects a sort of callousness so prevalent in the survivalist ethic. If this is to become a society intolerant of failure and uncompassionate in the face of suffering, then we are lost.”

NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSED; ellipted; italics added;

In 1981 Trudeau was an even more popular satirical cartoonist than he is now. At Colby he was giving his opinion to graduating college students many of whom had also become fans of the hit show Saturday Night Live (after its 6th season).

...as "the part of you that's in everything"..

by: Ran Prieur fromtype: blog date: 2005-11

“In this culture, we're too busy and distracted and stressed out to find our centers, so we have to obsessively define and defend boundaries to feel like we even exist, which is why right wing Christians complain about liberals and gays, and why almost all content on political blogs is in the form of attacking opponents.

So what is this "center"? A practicing Buddhist friend, who has done a lot of meditating, says you discover that all the stuff you thought of as "you" -- your beliefs, your personality, your likes and dislikes -- isn't really you. Under that is what Buddhists describe as "the part of you that's in everything." I've also read about hypnotists who have discovered what they call the "human soul" -- if you get people deep enough, they all have a voice in them that is very wise and seems to be the same for everyone. Patricia comments:

'While I think I know what it feels like when I am centered, I'm not sure I could describe my center... I'm not sure that what I think of as my center, is really mine at all, but maybe something shared, or like a place where I connect into something bigger than just this small, temporary creature I call Me.'

I would describe my center as that-which-perceives, in the broadest sense of "perceive." One way to get there is with the "not that" meditation: Find a quiet, still place, close your eyes, and ask yourself, "Who am I?" And whatever you come up with, keep saying "not that" and looking deeper. Another way to get there is to imagine awareness without existence. (If you say that's impossible, you're dodging the exercise.) Or if you're a computer gamer, imagine a game where you can "zoom in" to play any creature, or any function of that creature, or zoom out to play groups or the whole map. Your "center" is that zoomable perspective, and it's not limited by your human identity. When you find it, you feel both grounded and free, both immortal and egoless.”

from here

...make absolutely sure he isn't well connected...

by: Kurt Vonnegut from: “Slaughterhouse-Five” fromtype: novel context: “” context type: date: 1969

“Rosewater was on the next bed, reading, and Billy drew him into the conversation, asked him what he was reading this time.

So Rosewater told him. It was The Gospel from Outer Space, by Kilgore Trout. It was about a visitor from outer space, shaped very much like a Tralfamadorian, by the way. The visitor from outer space made a serious study of Christianity, to learn, if he could, why Christians found it so easy to be cruel. He concluded that at least part of the trouble was slipshod storytelling in the New Testament. He supposed that the intent of the Gospels was to teach people, among other things, to be merciful, even to the lowest of the low.

But the Gospels actually taught this:

Before you kill somebody, make absolutely sure he isn't well connected. So it goes.

The flaw in the Christ stories, said the visitor from outer space, was that Christ, who didn't look like much, was actually the Son of the Most Powerful Being in the Universe. Readers understood that, so, when they came to the crucifixion, they naturally thought, and Rosewater read out loud again:

Oh boy - they sure picked the wrong guy to lynch that time!

And that thought had a brother: "There are right people to lynch." Who? People not well connected. So it goes.

The visitor from outer space made a gift to Earth of a new Gospel. In it, Jesus really was a nobody, and a pain in the neck to a lot of people with better connections than he had. He still got to say all the lovely and puzzling things he said in the other Gospels.

So the people amused themselves one day by nailing him to a cross and planting the cross in the ground. There couldn't possibly be any repercussions, the lynchers thought. The reader would have to think that, too, since the new Gospel hammered home again and again what a nobody Jesus was.

And then, just before the nobody died, the heavens opened up, and there was thunder and lightning. The voice of God came crashing down. He told the people that he was adopting the bum as his son, giving him the full powers and privileges of The Son of the Creator of the Universe throughout all eternity. God said this: From this moment on, He will punish horribly anybody who torments a bum who has no connections!

Billy's fiancee had finished her Three Musketeers candy bar. Now she was eating a Milky Way.

"Forget books," said Rosewater, throwing that particular book under his bed. "The hell with 'em."

"That sounded like an interesting one," said Valencia.

"Jesus-if Kilgore Trout could only write!" Rosewater exclaimed. He had a point: Kilgore Trout's unpopularity was deserved. His prose was frightful. Only his ideas were good.”

...and hence, in the long run, too intelligent...

by: George Orwell from: “1984” fromtype: novel context: “chapter III: "War is Peace"” context type: date: 1949

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.

In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.”

author was born as 'Eric Blair'

...the European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed of his ... immorality ...

by: Friedrich Nietzsche from: “notebooks [later compiled as 'The Will To Power' ]” fromtype: #120 context: “” context type: date: 1887

“...man has become more natural in the nineteenth century ...We are courser, more direct, full of irony against generous feelings even when we succumb to them ...more natural is our attitude to the search for knowledge ...more natural is our attitude towards morality ...more natural is our position in politicis ..we do not believe in any right that is not supported by the power of enforcement ...more natural is our estimation of great human beings ...more natural is our attitude towards nature; we no longer love it on account of its 'innocence' ...more natural is our attitude towards art; brutal positivism reigns, recognizing facts without becoming excited.

In summa, there are signs that the European of the nineteenth century is less ashamed of his instincts;.. his immorality without becoming embittered -- on the contrary, strong enough to endure only this sight.”

NOT ENDORSED; ellipted; italics in original; trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale; edited by Kaufmann

...ideas...like the air in which we breathe...

by: Thomas Jefferson from: “” fromtype: personal letter context: “addressed to Isaac McPherson” context type: date: 1813-08-13

“It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors.

It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body.

Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices.”

...see how suspicious she is...

by: R.D. Laing from: “Sanity Madness and the Family” fromtype: book context: “2nd preface” context type: date: 1969

“Another mystifying feature of this family is the marked conspiratorial tone and manner they adopt with each other and with us in Sarah's absence ...

On one occasion, when Sarah left the room, her mother, father, and brother began a furtive whispered exchange about her. As Sarah re-entered she said uncertainly that she had the impression that they were talking about her. They denied this and looked at us significantly as though to say 'see how suspicious she is'.”

author: lifespan 1927-1989

...they love the jargon of personal triumph...

by: David Denby from: “Transcending the Suburbs” fromtype: movie review context: “the New Yorker” context type: magazine date: 1999-09-09

“Angela really does come on to Lester ... In a series of savagely written scenes, he misbehaves all over the place, insulting his wife and telling off his boss, while devoting himself with monastic discipline to creating a body that a teenager will desire.

In separate ways, husband and wife are representative nineties Americans, whipping themselves into frenzies of narcissistic will ... Carolyn [is] a joyless perfectionist and a phony --- her politeness could freeze Martha Stewart in her tracks ...

Angela, teen queen, .. believes in projecting success all the time, and she terrorizes Lester's daughter, Jane, with her erotic expertise, insisting that she's pleased that grown men like Lester want to sleep with her, "because it means I have a chance of being a model." In her Valley Girl way -- she speaks the bullying, media-wise teen idiom -- Angela holds herself to corporate standards of presentability.

All these characters know about self-actualization; they believe in the gospel of selfishness, and they love the jargon of personal triumph, but underneath they feel bereft, as if there true selves had gone unrecognized.”

ellipted; from a review of 'American Beauty' (1999; directed by Sam Mendes)