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More from Vonnegut
Pardon me if I seem a bit obsessive with the Vonnegut. I was reading some old interviews he did and other stuff and I came across some things that really struck me in an interview he did with David Brancaccio on the PBS show NOW back in October of 2005. It's a rather long interview, but I wanted to highlight two moments that struck me (slightly edited for your convenience):
DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's a little sweet moment, I've got to say, in a very intense book-- your latest-- in which you're heading out the door and your wife says what are you doing? I think you say-- I'm getting-- I'm going to buy an envelope. [...] What happens then?
KURT VONNEGUT: Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know. The moral of the story is, is we're here on Earth to fart around.
And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well you wrote in the book about this. You write; What makes being a live almost worthwhile [...] for me besides music, was all the Saints I met who could be anywhere. By 'Saints' I meant people who behaved decently, in a strikingly indecent society.
[...]KURT VONNEGUT: Yeah. On a human level. And, oh, I've also spoken about you, know you've heard of 'original sin.' Well, I also, I call attention to original virtue. Some people are born to be nice, and they're gonna be nice all their lives, no matter what.
As pessimistic as Vonnegut can seem at times, when it comes down to it, for him, life can be good. There is, I think, a certain duality in his thought. On the one hand, we see human beings making very bad choices that hurt ourselves and each other, and many of these forces have such a weight bearing down upon us that they're crushing, they're beyond our control. It's our science and government in Cat's Cradle, creating things that can end all life on earth. In interviews over the last few years, its our leaders in government and industry (feel free to pretend there's a difference if you'd like) who are screwing us, either through outright vice or mere incompetence--or it's Peak Oil, which could have disasterous effects if we are as short-sighted as we would appear to be.
All that doom and gloom, though, is just one side of the human coin for Vonnegut. On a personal level, life can be very sweet, particular people can be very, very good.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You write "what can be said to our young people now that psychopathic personalities — which is to say persons without consciences, without senses of pity or shame — have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it their own?" What can we say to younger people who have their whole lives ahead of them?
KURT VONNEGUT: Well, you are human beings. Resourceful. Form a little society of your own. And, hang out with them. Get a gang.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're preaching getting into gangs?
KURT VONNEGUT: Yes. Well, look, it's--
DAVID BRANCACCIO: A good gang.
KURT VONNEGUT: Look, I don't mean to intimidate you, but I have a master's degree in anthropology.
DAVID BRANCACCIO: I'm intimidated.
KURT VONNEGUT: From the University of Chicago-- as did Saul Bellow, incidentally. But anyway, one thing I found out was that we need extended families. We need gangs. And, of course, if they're tribes and clans and so forth have been dispersed by the industrial revolution by people looking for work wherever they can find it. And a nuclear family, a man, a woman and kids and a dog and cat is no survival scheme at all. Horribly vulnerable.
So yes, I tell people to formulate a little gang. And, you know, you love each other.
This is obviously similar to what I was getting at earlier. Life can be sweet for us, if we choose to make it so. Further, Vonnegut suggests that we're put together in such a way that we need these groups. Not, I hasten to add, just that we need "people" in some kind of general sense, but we need to be part of a group, a tribe, an extended family, a community. More and more in modern society, we've fragmented into little groups, individuals and couples and nuclear families, and that by itself is not enough.
On a less serious note, you did catch it, right, what Vonnegut tells us we're here on earth to do, right? That's right: we're here to fart around, so get to it, in what ever way works for you.