Enemy of Entropy

Archive for 17 July 2008

ToTD: Fran Lebowitz

17 July 2008, 4:31 pm. 2 Comments. Filed under Thought of the Day.

Take away a man’s actual sense of man­hood – which is con­ven­tion­ally based on the abil­ity to work, to earn money, to be self-​​sufficient, to pro­vide for chil­dren – and you’ve got to give them some­thing else. And they did.

This hideous reli­gion that’s all over the coun­try – these huge church-​​malls – that’s what sub­sti­tutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A com­mu­nity is a butcher and a doc­tor, a min­is­ter, a town trou­ble­maker. A ‘com­mu­nity’ is not a bunch of peo­ple united by some griev­ance. That’s just self-​​righteousness – incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous and anti­de­mo­c­ra­tic. Peo­ple have become so rigid; their opin­ions seem to them like them­selves. When that hap­pens (and it has hap­pened) peo­ple can’t change their minds. If you are iden­ti­fied by your opin­ions – if that is the very basis of your­self – how can you change your mind?

Fran Lebowitz, Rumi­na­tor Mag­a­zine inter­view with Susan­nah McNeely (August/​September 2005)

 

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