[ExI] quote of the day

[spike at rainier66.com]

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of William Flynn Wallace
Sent: Wednesday, May 2, 2018 12:09 PM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Subject: [ExI] quote of the day

 

>From Steinbeck's Cannery Row:

 

"It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc.  "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system  And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.  And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second."

 

bill w  (to  Spike - see, I don't remember this at all)

 

 

 

Eh, Doc was Steinbeck’s real world friend: Ed Ricketts is a real guy.  He was the hardest core of hard core leftists, really a communist, which is easy to be if one lived on Cannery Row in those days: it must have sometimes seemed that most of the populace were drunken useless drifters in need of everything, as Danny and his companions were.  

 

Doc’s cynicism on the condition of man was understandable.  On Cannery Row, there were workers slaving in the cannery with every last ounce of strength, capitalists who owned the place and made most of the money, a motley mixture of writers and poets, the crowd of drunks, and him.  Steinbeck uses Doc as a mouthpiece for his own political views, and is brilliant.  Even if one disagrees with Doc, you come away liking him, particularly after how he was in Sweet Thursday.

 

spike

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20180502/987cdcaa/attachment.html>