| 16 April, 2009 |
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Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat. The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but hold hands. The friendly cow all red and white, After several minutes of utterly dull conversation I began to think of her not as a woman but as a human, then not as a human but as an animal, then not as an animal but as a source of high-grade protein. It would appear that we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology, although one should be careful with such statements, as they tend to sound pretty silly in 5 years. It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow. There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home. No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris ... [because] no known motor can run at the requisite speed for four days without stopping. Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further development. What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice as fast as stagecoaches? Every now and then when your life gets complicated and the weasels start closing in, the only cure is to load up on heinous chemicals and then drive like a bastard from Hollywood to Las Vegas ... with the music at top volume and at least a pint of ether. Why think? Why not try the experiment? The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek. Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so. Our view. . . is that it is an essential characteristic of experimentation that it is carried out with limited resources, and an essential part of the subject of experimental design to ascertain how these should be best applied; or, in particular, to which causes of disturbance care should be given, and which ought to be deliberately ignored. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. A fact is a simple statement that everyone believes. It is innocent, unless found guilty. A hypothesis is a novel suggestion that no one wants to believe. It is guilty, until found effective. Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.) To the biologist the problem of socialism appears largely as a problem of size. The extreme socialists desire to run every nation as a single business concern. I do not suppose that Henry Ford would find much difficulty in running Andorra or Luxembourg on a socialistic basis. He has already more men on his pay-roll than their population. It is conceivable that a syndicate of Fords, if we could find them, would make Belgium Ltd. or Denmark Inc. pay their way. But while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge. We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists. Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors. No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making other bastards die for their country. Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week. To conquer the enemy without resorting to war is the most desirable. The highest form of generalship is to conquer the enemy by strategy. Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. [There is no need to worry about a protracted war because] from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time. [The U.S. victory in Gulf war was] a stirring victory for the forces of aggression. Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it. Men are equal; it is not birth but virtue that makes the difference. .... You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival. After all, he thought he was God. God created sex. Priests created marriage. An apology for the devil: it must be remembered that we have heard one side of the case. God has written all the books. In the beginning Man created God; and in the image of Man created he him. I think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability. ...no man of genuinely superior intelligence has ever been an actor. Even supposing a young man of appreciable mental powers to be lured upon the stage, as philosophers are occasionally lured into bordellos, his mind would be inevitably and almost immediately destroyed by the gaudy nonsense issuing from his mouth every night. Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent. What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence. Man has made use of his intelligence, he invented stupidity. The intelligent man is one who has successfully fulfilled many accomplishments, and is yet willing to learn more. Over the past ten years, for the first time, intelligence had become socially correct for girls. That young girl is one of the least benightedly unintelligent organic life forms it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting. The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward. It is not fair to ask of others what you are unwilling to do yourself. ...a science is said to be useful if its development tends to accentuate the existing inequalities in the destribution of wealth, or more directly promotes the destruction of human life. Science would be ruined if (like sports) it were to put competition above everything else, and if it were to clarify the rules of competition by withdrawing entirely into narrowly defined specialties. The rare scholars who are nomads-by-choice are essential to the intellectual welfare of the settled disciplines. Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books. |
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