Burning Man : A self-destructive man feels completely
alienated, utterly alone. He's an outsider to
the human community. He thinks to himself, "I
must be insane." What he fails to realize is
that society has, just as he does, a vested
interest in considerable losses and
catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and
quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants
chaos. In fact, he's gotta have it.
Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this
dread. We're irresistibly drawn to that almost
orgiastic state created out of death and
destruction. It's in all of us. We revel in
it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on
these things, painting them up as great human
tragedies. But we all know the function of the
media has never been to eliminate the evils of
the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to
accept those evils and get used to living with
them. The powers that be want us to be passive
observers. (...) And they haven't given us
any other options outside the occasional,
purely symbolic, participatory act of voting.
You want the puppet on the right or the puppet
on the left?
-
Guy Forsyth : The trick is to combine your waking rational
abilities with the infinite possibilities of
your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you
can do anything.
-
Man on the Train : Hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley : Yeah.
Man on the Train : I haven't seen too many around lately. Things
have been tough lately for dreamers. They say
dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It's
not dead it's just that it's been forgotten,
removed from our language. Nobody teaches it
so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is
banished to obscurity. Well, I'm trying to
change all that, and I hope you are too. By
dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands
and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is
facing the greatest problems it's ever faced,
ever. So whatever you do, don't be bored, this
is absolutely the most exciting time we could
have possibly hoped to be alive. And things
are just starting.
-
Boat Car Guy : The idea is to remain in a state of constant
departure while always arriving.
-
Philosophy Prof. : The reason why I refuse to take existentialism
as just another French fashion or historical
curiosity, is that I think it has something
very important to offer us for the new
century. I'm afraid we're losing the real
virtues of living life passionately in the
sense of taking responsibility for who you
are, the ability to make something of yourself
and feel good about life. Existentialism is
often discussed as if it's a philosophy of
despair, but I think the truth is just the
opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he
never really felt a day of despair in his
life. One thing that comes out from reading
these guys is not a sense of anguish about
life so much as, a real kind of exuberance, of
feeling on top of it, it's like your life is
yours to create. I've read the post modernists
with some interest, even admiration, but when
I read them I always have this awful nagging
feeling that something absolutely essential is
getting left out. The more you talk about a
person as a social construction or as a
confluence of forces or as fragmented or
marginalised, what you do is you open up a
whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre
talks about responsibility, he's not talking
about something abstract. He's not talking
about the kind of self or soul that
theologians would argue about. It's something
very concrete, it's you and me talking, making
decisions, doing things, and taking the
consequences. It might be true that there are
six billion people in this world, and
counting, but nevertheless - what you do makes
a difference. It makes a difference, first of
all, in material terms, it makes a difference
to other people, and it sets an example. In
short, I think the message here is that we
should never simply write ourselves off or see
each other as a victim of various forces. It's
always our decision who we are.
-
dream, beware, and beware, and beware. And so
many think because then happened, now isn’t.
But didn't I mention? The ongoing WOW is
happening right NOW. We are all co-authors of
this dancing exuberance, for even our
inabilities are having a roast. We are the
authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic
Dostoevsky novel starring clowns... An
assumption developed that you cannot
understand life and live life simultaneously.
I do not agree entirely, which is to say, I do
not exactly disagree. I would say that life
understood is life lived. But, the paradoxes
bug me, and I can learn to love and make love
to the paradoxes that bug me, and on really
romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing
with my confusion.
-
craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the
super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap
between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the
average human is greater than the gap between
that chimpanzee and the average human. The
realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the
saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved.
Why so few? Why is world history and evolution
not stories of progress but rather this
endless and futile addition of zeroes. No
greater values have developed. Hell, the
Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced
as we are. So what are these barriers that
keep people from reaching anywhere near their
real potential? The answer to that can be
found in another question, and that’s this:
Which is the most universal human
characteristic – fear or laziness?