'When Thoreau judged that most men lived lives of quiet desperation I think he failed to consider the fact that, by a merciful provision of Providence, most men have little or no more imagination than an animal. Good reasons for despair may be all around the average man, but he won't see them.' -James Gould Cozzens
This slogan is a lie; a lot of the time it's actually kinda painful, like whenever the television is on or when you accidentally overhear a conversation in public and you think "Dear Shiva, if I had to listen to her go on like that through the whole dinner, I'd be using the fondue fork to tear out my eardrums before the dessert menu arrived."
Welcome to my life.
ReplyDeleteJim
Nahhhh, do the world a favor and drown the twit in the fondue.
ReplyDeleteAside from having to listen to or overhear stoopid, have you ever noticed how long you commonly have to wait for Ms. Average to play mental catch-up if you don't speak in slogans or just offer one simple idea at a time?
Noticed how often you're interrupted if you're trying to get a complex idea across and it takes three or four sentences to do so?
Enuf...
Art
No doubt.
ReplyDeleteThe pretty little things that roam suburbia here are wonderful to look at, but you have to wear earplugs because the things they natter on about into their cell-phones 20 hours a day would make you hang yourself from the rafters.
"Good reasons for despair may be all around the average man, but he won't see them."
ReplyDeleteOr it could be possible the "average man" has different priorities than his social and intellectual betters. For example, most ordinary people are much less enthusiastic about retreating to a neolithic level of existence to save the planet than is Al Gore, and he despairs plenty of it.
Oh, I don't mean to imply that Al Gore is enthusiastic about living at a neolithic level, sorry, that was lcumsy. He want everyone else to do it. And man, does he despair.
Anyway, that quote always struck me as the cloistered urbane sophisticate's lament that the hoi polloi don't care about the same things he does.