A major threat to the U.S. Republic
as I write in summer of 2022 is a potential American Right-wing (White,
Christian) Nationalist Mass Movement led by Donald Trump or someone with more
demagogic talent than he has. And that movement might be able to block or
pervert the 2024 U.S. Presidential and other elections or have them be the last
real elections for a long while. <http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2018/12/background-for-jihad-and-d-j-trump-2017.html>
Against such a Right-wing movement
we need a democratic united front of decent people with a variety of political
loyalties. As the cliché has it, effective politics means coalition politics,
and coalition politics requires people working together who disagree on a
number of things.
My idea of the United States is a
diverse, secular, Federal Republic with some democratic institutions, aspects,
and aspirations, and my social- and other-media messages so far have been
directed primarily to my potential allies of a militant atheistic bent, telling
them to look at the damn statistics already and realize they're going to have
to work with the Religious Left and more generally, with decent religious individuals.
There are no insurmountable problems if allies have some profound disagreements
on basic beliefs, which can usually be ignored while people concentrate of
practical projects. What can't be handled is trying to cooperate with people
you openly and actively despise or have them work with you; and so I've asked
my militantly atheistic brethren and sistren to tone it down (already) on the
metaphysics, stick to immediate challenges — and practice some old-fashioned
mannerly "cool correctness" (and screw authenticity: just be
polite!). <http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2017/12/reprint-yo-secular-leftists-arguing.html>
Well, polite and not so smugly
comfortable. Back in the day, with the atheistic Existentialists of mid-20th
c., atheists could recognize the old truth of "unaccommodated man" as "no more but such a poor
bare, forked animal"
as a guy mostly posing as a naked madman and beggar out in a storm — or newer
truths of humankind as just a more or less interesting experiment in enlarged
brains in a rather recently-evolved species on an unremarkable planet in an arm
of an unremarkable galaxy among "billions and billions of stars" and
other galaxies (as Carl Sagan used to say). <http://rich.viewsfromajaggedorbit.com/2015/04/the-incredible-shrinking-man-and-rise.html>
* * *
What I want to give you some time
with here is on a smaller scale but
also likely to offend some liberals and those further Left: Kurt Vonnegut's Player
Piano (1952) — U.K. folk: your version is Michael D. Young's dystopia, The
Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) — glancing at a right to be angry on the
part of a lot of Americans whose work has been devalued and who feel that
they're held in casual contempt by various American elites. Hillary Clinton said it would be a gross overgeneralization, but
"you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables": those sexists and racists et al. However the non-deplorables
susceptible to Trumpism include mediocre people (the majority of us are
mediocre at most things) whom opponents of Trumpism may be able to peel off
from Trump — but first need to understand a bit and treat with more respect.
Such people can be doing okay and be in many ways privileged and have legitimate grievances.
It may
seem odd at a time of low unemployment — hell, it may seem like another
panicked neo-Luddite
panicked over automation — but however automation to AI figures in important
things are going on with the education-levels (or at least years of schooling) of
US voters, and have been going on in a trend that may go 1952-2016. The
Republicans have been losing highly schooled White folk; Americans without
college degrees are very much in play and moving toward Republicans and to Donald
Trump. <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/trump-white-voters.html>
And this is something decent folk need to look at.
To move
toward such a project, I give below some texts from Player Piano, and I
have posted on "Views From a Jagged Orbit a study guide at least some of my students
found useful (and, what the hell, I have it).
For now: Gang, if you've got a doctorate and you're not in the healing or spiritual arts — medical doctor, veterinarian, "Reverend Doctor ______," dentist — if you don't need the charisma of the title to do your job helping people, go with "Mister" or "Ms." or your elected title ("Senator," "Supervisor") or maybe even "Citizen" or just your first name. To rephrase an old line, "If you've got it, hide it, until you need it."
##########################
For
background you might want to see one or more of the following books:
Braverman, Harry. Labor
and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly
Review P, 1974.
Buchanan, Ben, and Andrew Imbrie. The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy
in the Age of AI. Cambridge, MA, and London, UK: The MIT Press,
2022.<https://www.clockworks2.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_New_Fire:_War,_Peace,_and_Democracy_in_the_Age_of_AI>
Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. NYC: Harper Collins, 1999.(Follow-up
to Backlash: The Undeclared War Against
American Women (Crown Publishing 1991).<http://susanfaludi.com/stiffed.html>
Hoffer, Eric. The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass
Movements. NYC:
Harper & Brothers, 1951: Part 2, Potential Converts. <https://tinyurl.com/5eunakxx>
Young, Michael. The Rise of the Meritocracy: 1870-2033: An essay on education
and society. London:
Thames and Hudson, 1958. NYC: Random House, 1959.
__________________________
(For Vonnegut's male-centered, sometimes sexist views, read
carefully — there's more subtlety here than usual in satire — note era of
composition and date of publication, and cut him some, not much, but some slack.
Ditto for other areas of insensitivity.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
(Excerpts;
bold face emphasis, where it comes
through, is Erlich's))
Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr. Player
Piano (vt Utopia 14). New
York: Scribner's, 1952. New York: Dell, 1974.
Foreword
This
book is not a book about what is, but a book about what could be. […] ¶ It is
mostly about managers and engineers. At this point in history, 1952 A.D. [i.e.
"Anno Domini," Year of Our/The Lord" (Note: KV is a gentle
atheist)], our lives and freedom depend largely upon the skill and imagination
and courage of our managers and engineers, and I hope that God will help them
to help us all stay alive and free. […]
Chapter 1
Opening:
Ilium, New York is divided into three parts.
In
the northwest are the managers and engineers and civil servants and a few
professional people; in the northeast are the machines; and in the south […] is
the area known locally as Homestead, where almost all of the people live. (p.
9)
Some
people […] had talked in the old days as though engineers, managers, and
scientists were an elite. […] But not many had taken the idea of an elite to
heart. […] But now this elite business,
this assurance of superiority, this sense of rightness about the hierarchy
topped by managers and engineers — this was instilled in all college graduates.
[***]
Objectively
Paul [Proteus: protagonist] tried to tell himself, things really were better
than ever. For once, after the great bloodbath of the war, the world really was
cleared of unnatural terrors — mass starvation, mass imprisonment, mass
torture, mass murder. Objectively, know-how and world law were getting their
long-awaited chance to turn earth into an altogether pleasant and convenient
place in which to sweat out Judgment Day. (p. 14)
Rudy
Hertz (machinist whose movements recorded for machines to replace
machinists): Rudy, the turner-on of power, the setter of speeds, the controller
of the cutting tool. This was the essence of Rudy as far as his machine was
concerned, as far as the economy was concerned, as far as the war effort had
been concerned. The [recording] tape was the essence distilled from the small,
polite man with the big hands and black fingernails […]. ¶ Now, by switching in
lathes on a master panel and feeding them signals from the tape, Paul could
make the essence of Rudy Hertz produce one, ten, a hundred, or a thousand of
the shafts [that Rudy had machined]. (p. 18)
Industrial Revolutions: "It
seemed very fresh to me [Katharine Finch, Paul's secretary] — I mean the part
where you say how the First Industrial
Revolution devalued muscle work, then the second one devalued routine mental work. […]." / "
Norbert Wiener […] said all that way back in the nineteen-forties." [***]
[Paul:] "A third one? What would that be like? […] I guess the third one's
been going on for some time, if you mean thinking machines. That would be the third revolution, I guess
— machines that devalue human thinking." (pp. 21-22)
Chapter 2 (Roman
numerals in Dell edition, which I've changed to Hindu/Arabic)
[The
Shah of Bratpuhr, on U.S. tour, through his nephew and translator, Khashdrahr
Miasma] "The Shah," said Khashdrahr, "he would like, please to
know who owns these slaves we see all the way up from New York City."
"Not
slaves," said [Doctor Ewing J.]
Halyard [U.S. Dept. of State], chuckling patronizingly, "Citizens, employed by government. […]
Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now
machines control themselves much better. […] And any man who cannot support
himself by doing a job better than a machine is employed by the government,
either in the Army or the Reconstruction and Reclamation Corps." (pp.
26-27 ["Reconstruction & Reclamation": "Reeks &
Wrecks" in slang]) *** (p. 27)
"Ahhhhh,"
said the Shah, "Ci-ti-zen."
He grinned happily. "Takaru —
citizen. Citizen — Takaru." ¶ "No Takaru!" said Halyard. ¶ Khashdrahr shrugged. "In the
Shah's land are only the Elite and the Takaru."
* * * [Moving around R&R road crew] "Thanks! It's about time!"
said Halyard as the limousine eased past the man. / "You're welcome, Doc," said the man, and he spat in Halyard's
face. (p. 29)
Chapter 3
There
were a few men in Homestead — like this bartender, the police and firemen,
professional athletes, cab drivers, specially skilled artisans — who hadn't
been displaced by machines. They lived among those who had been displaced, but
they were aloof […]. The general feeling across the river [among the elite] was
that these persons weren't too bright to be replaced by machines; they were
simply in activities where machines weren't economical. (p. 33).
Lie, but story of possible boy turning 18, time
of the Tests
[To
Paul in a bar] Well, as long as such a smart man as you is here, maybe I could
get you to give me some advice for the boy. He just finished his National
General Classification Tests. He just about killed himself studying up for
them, but it wasn't any use. He didn't do nearly well enough for college. There
were only twenty-seven openings and six hundred kids trying for them […]. I
can't afford to send him to a private school, so now he's got to decide what
he'd going to do with his life, Doctor:
what's it going to be, the Army or the Reeks and Wrecks?" [* * *] ¶ "Doctor,"
said the man, desperately now […], "isn't there something the boy could do
at the [Ilium] Works? He's awfully clever with his hands. He's got a kind of
instinct with machines. […] / "He's
got to have a graduate degree," said Paul. […] "That's policy
[…]. Maybe he could open a repair shop." / […] How many repair shops you
think Ilium can support, eh? […] We're all so clever with our hands, so we'll
all open repair shops. One repairman for every broken article in Ilium.
Meanwhile, our wives clean up as dressmakers — one dressmaker for every woman
in town." (pp. 36-37
Chapter 5
After
coffee and a liqueur, Paul gave a brief talk on the integration of the Ilium
Works with other industry under the [U.S.] National Manufacturing Council
fourteen years before. And then he went into the more general subject of what
he called The Second Industrial
Revolution. […] Machines were doing
America's work far better than Americans had ever done it. There were better
goods for more people at less cost, and who could deny that that was
magnificent and gratifying. [… Paul is interrupted by his boss — and boss to a
lot of people — who wishes to expand on Paul's (quite standard) point:]
[Kroner]
"One horsepower equals about twenty-two manpower — big manpower. If you convert the horsepower of one of the bigger
steel-mill motors into terms of manpower, you'll find that the motor [sic] does
more work than the entire slave population of the United States at the time of
the Civil War could do — and do it twenty-four hours a day." […]
[Paul]
"And that, of course, simply applies to the First Industrial Revolution,
where machines devalued muscle power. The second revolution, the one we're now
completing, is a little tougher to express in terms of work saved. If there
were some measure like horsepower in which we could express annoyance or
boredom that people used to experience in routine jobs — but there isn't."
"You
could measure rejects […] said [partner to Kroner in running the Eastern
Division of US industry] Baer, "and the darnedest, stupidest mistakes
imaginable. The waste, the stoppages, the lemons! […]
"Yes,"
said Paul, "but I was thinking of it from the worker's point of view. The
two industrial revolutions eliminated two kinds of drudgery, and I was looking
for some way of estimating just how much the second revolution had relieved men
of."
"I
work," said Baer [at the engineering parts of running Eastern Division].
Everyone laughed.
"The
others — across the river," said Paul.
"They
never did work," said Kroner, and again everyone laughed.
"And
they're reproducing like rabbits," said Anita [Paul's wife]. (pp. 56-57)
Chapter 8
[Katharine
Finch, Paul's secretary on Bud Calhoun, ace inventor — to Paul Proteus]
"Bud wants a job."
"Bud
wants a job? He's got the fourth-highest-paid job in Ilium now. […]."
[***]
"Ah
haven't got a job any more," said Bud. "Canned."
"[…]
What on earth for? […] What about the gadget you invented for —"
"That's
it," said Bud with an eerie mixture of pride and remorse. "Works.
Does a fine job. […] Does it a whole lot better than Ah ever did it."
"It
runs the who operation?"
"Yup.
Some gadget."
"And
so you're out of a job."
"Seventy-two
of us are out of jobs," said Bud. […] Ouah job classification has been
eliminated. Poof."[…] ¶ […] Now, personnel machines are over the country
would be reset so as no longer to recognize the job as one suited for men. The
combination of holes and nicks [on an «IBM card»] that Bud had been to
personnel machines would no longer be acceptable." [...] ¶ "They
don't need [people classified] P-128s any more," said Bud bleakly,
"and nothing's open above or below. Ah'd take a cut and go back to P-129
or even P-130, but it's no dice. Everybody's full up." (pp. 75-76) [***]
As Kroner often said, eternal vigilance was
the price of efficiency. And the machines tirelessly riffled through their
decks again and again and again in search of foot draggers, free riders, and
misfits. […] ¶ [Paul to Bud] "You should be in design."
"Got
no aptitude for it," said Bud. "Tests proved that." ¶ That would be on his ill-fated card,
too. All his aptitude-test grades were
on it — irrevocably, immutable, and the card knew best. "But you do design," said Paul." […] ¶
But the tests says no," said Bud. ¶ "So the machines say no,"
said Katharine. ¶ So that's that," said Bud. [* * *]
"Uh-huh,"
said Paul, looking at the familiar graph with distaste. It was a so-called Achievement and Aptitude Profile, and every
college graduate got one along with his sheepskin. And the sheepskin was
nothing and the graph was everything. (pp. 76-77)
Chapter 9
[James
J. Lasher speaking of back when he was a Protestant minister taking to his
congregation or one or more congregants:] "I used to tell them that the
life of their spirit in relation to God was the biggest thing in their lives,
and that their part in the economy was nothing by comparison. Now, you people [engineering/managerial
elites] have engineered them out of their part in the economy, in the market
place, and they're finding out — most of them — that what's left is about zero.
[…] For generations they've been built up to
worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and
the envy of their fellow men — and boom! It's all yanked out from under
them. […] Maybe the actual jobs weren't taken from the people, but the sense of
participation, the sense of importance was. […] as far back as World War II,]
Even then there was a lot of talk about know-how winning the war of production
— know-how,
not the people, not the mediocre
people running most of the machines. And the hell of it was that it was
pretty much true." (p. 92)
"Strange
business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and
engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort
of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and
advertising men to make big business popular in the old days, which it
certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with
all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about
them. Yesterday's snow job become today's sermon." (p. 93)
[Lasher:]
"Things, gentlemen, are ripe for a
phony Messiah, and when he comes, it's sure to be a bloody business. […] At the bottom of it will be a promise of
regaining the feeling of participation, the feeling of being needed of earth —
hell, dignity. The police are
bright enough to look for people like that, and lock them up under the
antisabotage laws. But sooner or later someone's going to keep out of sight long
enough to organize a following." [***]
"I
think it's a grave mistake to put on public record everyone's I.Q. […] the
first thing the revolutionaries would want to do is knock off everybody with an
I.Q. over 110, say." ¶ "Then he 100's would go after the 110's, the
90's after the 100's and so on," said [Ed] Finnerty [friend of Paul].
"Maybe.
Something like that. Things are certainly set up for a class war based on conveniently established lines of demarcation. [….]
The criterion of brains is better than the one of money, but — he [Lasher]
held his thumb and forefinger about a sixteenth of an inch apart — about that much better."
"It's about as rigid a hierarchy as you can
get, " said Finnerty. "How's someone going to up his I.Q.?"
"Exactly,"
said Lasher. "And it's built on more than just brain power — it's built on
special kinds of brain power. Not only
must a person be bright, he must be bright in certain approved, useful
directions: basically, management or engineering." (pp. 93-95).
Chapter 11 (in the
cavern with EPICAC XIV)
EPICAC XIV […] was already at
work, deciding […] how many everything America and her customers could have and
how much they would cost. And it was EPICAC XIV who would decide […] how many
engineers and managers and research men and civil servants, and of what skills
would be needed in order to deliver the goods; and what I.Q. and aptitude
levels would separate the useful men from the useless ones […]. (p. 117)
Chapter 14
[Paul
Proteus, Doctor of Science, engineer and manager, thinking of what would later
be called "dropping out":] Again uneasiness crept up on him, the fear
that there was far too little of him to get along anywhere outside the system
[…]. He might go into some small business […]. But he would still be caught in
the mesh of the economy and its concomitant hierarchy. The machines wouldn't
let him into that business, anyway, and even if they would, there'd be no less
nonsense and posturing. […]. (pp. 143-44).
Farming
— now there was a magic word. [… But] There were no longer farmers but only
agricultural engineers. (p. 144)
Chapter 15
[Paul Proteus and the realtor, Dr. Pond, at the
Gottwald farm, farmed by Mr. Haycox, son of former owner]
"Doctor
Proteus — this is Mr. Haycox."
"How
are you?" said Paul.
"Do,"
said Mr. Haycox. "What kind of doctor?"
"Doctor
of Science," said Paul.
Mr.
Haycox seemed annoyed and disappointed. "Don't call that kind a doctor at
all. Three kinds of doctors: dentists, vets, and physicians. You one of
those?"
"No.
Sorry."
"Then
you ain't a doctor."
"He
is a doctor," said Doctor Pond
earnestly, "He knows how to keep machines healthy." He was trying to
build up the importance of graduate
degrees in the mind of this clod.
"Mechanic,"
said Mr. Haycox. […]
[Pond:]
"The modern world would grind to a halt if there weren't men with enough
advanced training to keep the complicated parts of civilization working
smoothly."
"Um,"
said Mr. Haycox apathetically. "What do you keep working so
smoothly?"
"Doctor
Pond smiled modestly. "I spent seven years at the Cornell Graduate School
of Realty to qualify for a Doctor of
Realty degree and get this job. [***] I think I can say […] that I earned
that degree," said Doctor Pond coolly. "My thesis was the third
longest in any field in the country that year — eight hundred and ninety-six
pages, double-spaced, with narrow margins."
"Real-estate
salesman," said Mr. Haycox." […] "I'm doctor of cowshit,
pigshit, and chickenshit," he said. "When you doctors figure out what
you want, you'll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis." [***]
[Pond:]
"Doctor Proteus is buying the farm."
[Haycox:]
"My farm?" [***]
"The
Gottwald estate's farm," said Doctor Pond.
"That
a man?" [***] "Well, I'm a man. As far as men go, this here is my
farm more'n it's anybody else's. I'm the only man who ever cared about it, ever
did anything about it."
[Paul
Proteus will keep Haycox on.] (pp. 150-52)
Chapter 18
[Paul Proteus to his wife:] "In order to
get what we've got, Anita, we have, in effect, traded these people [the
under-schooled and un- or under-employed] out of what was the most important
thing on earth to them — the feeling of
being needed and useful, the foundation of self-respect." (p. 169) * *
*
"That's
just it: things haven't always been that way. It's new, and it's people like us
who've brought it about. Hell, everybody used to have some personal skill or
willingness to work on something he could trade for what he wanted. Now that
the machines have taken over, it's quite somebody who has anything to offer.
All most people can do is hope to be given something."
"If
someone has brains," said Anita firmly, "he can still get to the top.
That's the American way, Paul, and it hasn't changed." She looked at him
appraisingly. "Brains and nerve, Paul."
"And
blinders." (p. 177)
Chapter 19
Paul
reflected that Baer [chief engineer of Eastern Division] was possibly the most
just, reasonable, and candid person he'd ever known — remarkably machine-like
in that the only problems he interested himself in were that brought to him,
and in that he went to work on all problems with equal energy and interest,
insensitive to quality and scale. (p. 187)
Chapter 20
[Homer Bigley, trimming hair of Shah and delivering
a monolog in English the Shah can't understand]: "Now they say barbering
isn't a profession, but you take the other professions that got too big for
their breeches since the Middle Ages and look down on barbering. You take
medicine, you take the law. Machinery.
"Doctor
doesn't use his head and education to figure out what's the matter with you.
Machines go over you — measure this, measure that. Then he picks out the right
miracle stuff, and the only reason he does is on account of the machines time
him that's what to do. And the lawyers! […]
"Used
to be sort of high and mighty, sort of priests those doctors and lawyers and
all, but they're beginning to look more and more like mechanics. Dentists are
holding up pretty good though. They're the exception that proves the rule, I
say. And barbering — one of the oldest professions on earth, incidentally — has
held up better than all the rest. Machines separated the men from the boys, you
might say. (pp. 195-96) * * *
"These
kids in the Army now, that's just a place to keep 'em off the streets and out
of trouble because there isn't anything else to do with them. And the only
chance they'll ever get to be anybody is if there's a war. That's the only
chance in the world they got of showing anybody they lived and died […].
"Used
to be there was a lot of damn fool things a dumb bastard could do to be great,
but the machines fixed that. […]
"Now
the machines take all the dangerous jobs, and the dumb bastards just get tucked
away in big bunch of prefabs […] or in barracks, and there's nothing for them
to do […]. Or maybe hope — but they don't say so out loud because the last one
was so terrible — for another war. Course there isn't going to be another one.
"And,
oh, I guess machines have made things a lot better. [… Though] It does seem
like the machines took all the good jobs […]. And I guess I'm just about the
end of a race, standing here on my own two feel" (p. 198)
[Next section of the monolog, Bigley tells how
a barber so feared the invention of a barber machine that he dreamed about it
and ended up inventing one himself: p. 199.]
Chapter 21
[Propaganda play at "The Meadows"
retreat for rising engineers and managers, and executives. "John
Averageman":] "Well, sir, it hurts a man a lot to be forgotten. You
know — to have the fellers in charge, the engineers and managers, just sort of
look right through him […]." (p. 205)
"The
play was virtually the same play that had begun every Meadows session […].
Twenty years ago, Paul's father had brought him up here, and the play's message
had been the same: that the common man
wasn't nearly as grateful as he should be for what the engineers and managers
had given him, and that the radicals were to cause of the ingratitude"
(p. 211).
Chapter 22
[On Dr. Francis Eldgrin
Gelhorne: Successor to George Proteus, hence, the
second National Industrial, Commercial, Communications, Foodstuffs, and
Resources Director (183). For all practical purposes, the human ruler of the US
economy, hence, of the US:]
When
war became certain and the largest corporations were looking about for new
manufacturing facilities, Gelhorne had delivered his prosperous community of
plants to General Steel, and became an officer of that corporation. The
rule-of-thumb familiarity he had with many different industries […] had been
broader than that of any executives General Steel had […], and Gelhorne was
soon spending all his time at the side of the corporation's war-rattled
president.
There
he'd come to the attention of Paul's father […], and Paul's father had made
Gelhorne his general executive manager when the whole economy had been made one
flesh. When Paul's father died, Gelhorne had taken over.
It
could never happen again. The machines would never stand for it. (pp. 218-19)
[Gelhorne to Paul:] "Show me a specialist,
and I'll show you a man who'd so scared he's dug a hole for himself to hide in.
[…] Almost nobody's competent, Paul.
It's enough to make you cry to see how bad most people are at their jobs. If
you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're the one-eyed man in the kingdom
of the blind." (p. 219)
Chapter 24
[Halyard of State Department with a first-time
hooker he's almost completed procuring for the Shah:]
"Anyway,"
said the girl, my husband's book was rejected by the Council."
"Badly
written," said Halyard primly. […]
"Beautifully
written," she said patiently. "But it was twenty-seven pages longer
than the maximum length; its readability quotient was 26.3, and —"
"No
[book] club will touch anything with an R.Q. above 17," explained Halyard.
"And,"
the girl continued, "it had an antimachine theme." [***]
"He
sounds very maladjusted," said
Halyard [… who recommends psychotherapy ***].
"[…]
He watched his brother find peace of mind through psychiatry. That's why he won't have anything to do with it.
"I don't follow. Isn't
his brother happy?"
"Utterly
and always happy. And my husband says somebody's just got to be maladjusted; that somebody's got to be uncomfortable
enough to wonder where people are, where they're going […]. That was the
trouble with his book. It raised those questions, and was rejected. So he was
ordered into public relations duty
[… which he refused, cutting him off from his gov't supports].
"I
was wandering around town, wondering what on earth a girl could do these days
to make a few dollars. There aren't many things."
[Halyard:]
"This husband of yours, he'd rather have his wife a — Rather have her
—" Halyard cleared his throat — "than go into public relations?"
"I'm
proud to say, said, the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with
a little self-respect left." {NOTE: Vonnegut was a PR flack for General Electric
for a bit, after he returned from World War II. Erlich definitely appreciates
the joke since for a summer job he looked in at a PR operation and had to leave
because he was starting to gag; he took a job doing hospital work and wasn't
queasy there.}
Chapter 26
[Paul Proteus on an "All automatic"
train:] […] Paul wondered at what thorough believers in mechanization most
Americans were, even when their lives had been badly damaged by mechanization. The [former train]
conductor's plaint, like the lament of so many wasn't that it was unjust to take jobs from men to give them
to machines, but that the machines didn't do nearly as many human things as
good designers could have made them do. (p. 241)
[Army guys on train observed by Paul Proteus
with Paul's thoughts, or the Narrator's:]
Paul
shook his head slightly as he listened to the sergeant's absurd tale [of a
generator "moonlight requisitioned" (i.e., stolen) and put to use
powering up the automated weaponry that butchered attackers]. That, then, was
the war he had been so eager to get
into at one time, the opportunity for basic, hot-tempered, hard-muscled heroism
he regretted having missed. There was plenty of death, plenty of pain […]. But
men had been called upon chiefly to endure by the side of the machines, the
terrible engines that fought with their own kind for the right to gorge
themselves on men. […]
"Gosh!
Sarge, how come you never went after a commission?"
"Me
go back to college at my age? […] Getting' that B.S. was enough for me. Two
more years and an M.A. for a pair of lousy gold bars [of a U.S. Army second
lieutenant]? Naaaaaah!" (pp. 242-43)
[Paul getting off train at Ilium station and
seeing in a standard-satiric list, shortened here:] […] The automatic ticket
vendor, the automatic [chewing] gum vendor, the automatic book vendor, […] the
automatic Coke vendor […]. (p. 245)]
Chapter 27
[Paul — having quit his job/been fired (plot
stuff), watching day-time TV: the standard show. Kid to mom on why he was in a
fight:]
[…]
but he said my I.Q. was 59, Ma! […]
And he said Pop was a 53." [… And] It's true. I went down to the police station and looked it up! […] He turned his back, and his voice was a
bitter whisper: "And you with a 47, Ma. A 47." [***]
"Jimmy,
I.Q. isn't everything. Some of the unhappiest people in the world are the
smartest one."
Since
the start of his week of idleness at home Paul had learned that this, with
variations, was the basic problem situation in afternoon dramas, with diseases
and injuries of the optic nerve and locomotor apparatus a close second. […]
"You
mean — a plain fellow like me […] folks like us, Ma, you mean we're as good as,
as, as, well, Doctor Gorson, the Worlds Manager?"
"Doctor
Gorson, with his 169 I.Q. Doctor Gorson, with his PhD. [sic on no periods],
D.Sc., and his Ph. And D. […] Him?" […] Jimmy […], have you seen the lines
in his face? He's carryin' the world around on his shoulders, Jimmy That's what
a high I.Q. got him […]. Do you know how old he is? […] He's ten years younger
than your Pa, Jimmy. That's what
brains got him." (p. 248)
Chapter 28
[Thoughts of, "Doctor Harold Roseberry, PE-002,"
head coach of Cornell U football, which has paid for several new campus
buildings] and four new professorial chairs: The Philosophy of Creative
Engineering, Creative Engineering History, Creative Public Relations for
Engineers, and Creative Engineering and
the Captive Consumer. (pp. 258-59)
[Informal competition between Roseberry and one
of the Elite (quite drunk) from the Meadows, for the soul and abilities of Buck
Young, an IM football champion for Delta Upsilon, being offered $35K a year to
play for Cornell — or he can continue his studies: university athletes are pro
athletes, not students.]
[Identifying
himself:] "Doctor, Doctor, mind
you, Edmond L. Harrison of the Ithaca works. […] He appealed to Buck, whose
exit [from the campus bar of this scene]. Doctor Roseberry represents one road,
and I the other. I am you, if you continue on your present course [of studying
for a degree], five years from now. […] If you are good," he said,
"and if you are thoughtful, a fractured pelvis on the gridiron will pain
you less than a life of engineering and management. In that life, believe me,
the thoughtful, the sensitive, those who can recognize the ridiculous, die a
thousand deaths." […]
"The
best man I knew at the Meadows —"
"The
Meadows?" said Buck in
awe."
"The
Meadows," said Harrison, "where men at the head of the procession of
civilization demonstrate in private [with their competition at camp games] that
they are ten-year-olds at heart, that they haven't the vaguest notion of what
they're doing to the world."
"They're
opening new doors at the head of the procession!" said Buck hotly, shocked
by the near-sabotage talk. […]"
"Slamming
doors in everybody's face," said Harrison. "That's what they're
doing." (pp. 264-65)
[Harrison talks of quitting and leaving
civilization.]
"And
do what?" said Buck, baffled.
"Do?"
said Harrison. "Do?" That's
just it, my boy. All the doors have been closed. There's nothing to do but find
a womb suitable for an adult, and crawl into it. One without machines would suit
me particularly."
"What have you got against
machines?" said Buck.
"They're slaves."
"Well,
what the heck, said Buck. "I mean, they aren't people. They don't suffer.
They don't mind working."
"No.
But they compete with people."
"That's
a pretty good thing, isn't it — considering what a sloppy job most people do of
anything?"
"Anybody that competes with slaves
becomes a slave," said Harrison thickly, and he left. (p. 266)
Chapter 29
[Paul Proteus, having been taken captive by the
revolutionaries of The Ghost Shirt Society, whose goal is stated by Ed
Finnerty, and the interview with/initial indoctrination of the drugged Paul
continues:]
"That
the world should be restored to the people." […]
"You're
going to help" [as figure-head and/or Messiah-figure]. […]
"What's
a ghost shirt?" murmured Paul […].
"Toward
the end of the nineteenth century," said Lasher [movement leader, former
Christian minister, quite realistic and pragmatic fanatic], a new religious
movement swept the Indians in this country, Doctor."
"The
Ghost Dance, Paul," said Finnerty.
"The
white man had broken promise after promise to the Indians, killed off most of
the game, taken most of the Indians' land, and handed the Indians bad beatings
every time they offered any resistance," said Lasher. […]. […] the Indians
found out that all the things they used to take pride in doing […] all the ways
[…] they used to justify their existence — they found all those things were
going or gone. […]"
"[…]
Indian ways in a white man's world were irrelevant. […] They only thing they
could do in the changed world was to become second-rate white men or wards of
the white men."
"Or
they could make one last fight for the old values," said Finnerty with
relish.
"And
the Ghost Dance religion," said Lasher, "was the last, desperate
defense of the old values." [***]
"They
were going to ride into battle one last time," said Lasher, "in magic
shirts that white men's bullets couldn't go through." (pp. 272-73)
"Don't
you see, Doctor [Proteus]" said Lasher. "The machines are to practically everybody what the white men were to
the Indians. […] People have no choice but to become second-rate machines
themselves or wards of the machines." [***]
"[…]
If a Messiah shows up now [Lasher says] with a good, solid, startling message,
and if he keeps out of the hands of the police, he can set off a revolution —
maybe one big enough to take the world away from machines, Doctor, and give it
back to the people." ([And Paul is their choice.] pp. 274-75)
Chapter 30
[On their inability to recruit a character seen
earlier, Alfy Tucci, who] "[…] never joined anything […]." […]
Lasher
smiled sadly. "The great American
individual," he said. "Thinks he's the embodiment of liberal thought
throughout the ages. Stand on his own two feet, by God, alone and motionless.
He'd make a good lamp post, if he'd weather better and didn't have to
eat." (pp. 281-82)
[Plan for the Revolution and difference from
our times: those social organizations (Kiwanis, Elks, General Federation of
Women's Clubs, Order of the Eastern Star — although KV doesn't note the women's
groups) vs. our "Bowling Alone"]
"A
special meeting of every chapter of every big social organization in the
country, outside of the engineers' and managers', will have been called. At the
meetings, our people, big men in the organizations, will tell the members that
all over the country men are marching through the streets on their way to wreck
the automatic factories and give America back to the people. Then they put on
their ghost shirts and lead whoever will follow, starting with a few more of
our people planted around." […]
"How many do you suppose will
follow?" said Paul.
"As many people as are bored to
death or sick of things the way they are," said Lasher. […]
"And then what?" said
Paul.
"And then we get back to basic
values, basic virtues!" said Finnerty. Men doing men's work, women doing
women's work. People doing people's thinking."
[Which
leads to a discussion of EPICAC.] (pp. 282-83).
Chapter 31 [Paul
captured by police]
When
the police had identified Paul, they had been embarrassed by his I.Q., and his
rank in the criminal hierarchy: the archcriminal, the would-be king of the
saboteurs. There was no comparable rank in the Ilium police force, and the
police had, out of humbleness and lifelong indoctrination, sent for inquisitors
with adequate classification numbers and I.Q.'s. (p. 289)
Chapter 32 [Paul's
testimony at his trial, while hooked up to a lie detector with a very public
response indicator.]
"The
witness will please tell what he considers to be a lie," said the judge.
"Every new piece of scientific
knowledge is a good thing for humanity," said Paul. […]
"Now
a truth," said the judge.
"The
main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings," said
Paul, "not to serve as appendages
to machines, institutions, and systems." (p. 297, Erlich's
emphasis of a line important for Vonnegut)
[Prosecutor says, with some truth according to
the lie detector on Paul's responses, that Paul's real motivation for leading the rebellion was hatred of his
father.] "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury and the television audience: I
submit that this man before you is a little more than a spiteful boy, to whom
this great land of ours […] has become a symbol of his father! A father whom,
subconsciously, he would have liked to destroy. […] Call it Oedipus complex, if
you will. He's a grown man now, and I call it treason!" (p. 298)
[Paul
responds with an important argument against not just 1950s Freudian
psychologizing but the much older and more deeply-rooted Roman/Christian
over-emphasis on people's motives.]
"But,
even if there weren't this unpleasant business between me and the memory of my
father, I think I would believe in the arguments against the lawlessness of the
machines. […] What hate does, I think, is to make me not only believe, but want
to do something about the system. […]
"I suspect that all people are motivated by
something pretty sordid, and I guess the clinical data bears me out on
that. Sordid things, for the most part,
are what make human beings, my father included, move. That's what it is to
be human […].
"What
the prosecutor has just done is to prove what everything about this world we've
made for ourselves seems determined to prove, what the Ghost Shirt Society is
determined to disprove; that I'm no good; you're no good, that we're no good
because we're human." (p. 299)
Chapter 33
[Ewing J. Halyard of the US State Department
hadn't passed the PE requirement for his Cornell Bachelor's degree. He's given
his makeup tests by Harold Roseberry, whom he has offended.]
Wondering
at the mechanics of being a human, mechanics far beyond he poor leverage of free
will, Mr. Halyard found himself representing the fact of no rank as
plainly as Doctor Halyard had once
represented a great deal of rank. […]
When
Halyard had recovered [from his make-up PE tests, as administered by Dr. Coach
Roseberry], and changed […] into street clothes, he had seen in the mirror, not
a brilliantly fashionable cosmopolite, but an old, overdressed fool. Off had
come the boutonniere, the contrasting waistcoat, the colored shirt. Accessory
by accessory, garment by ferment, he'd stripped away the symbols of the
discredited diplomat. Now he was, spiritually and sartorially, whites, grays,
and blacks. […]
[…]
The State Department's personnel machines, automatically, with a respect for
law and order never achieved by human beings, had started fraud proceeding
against him, since he had never been entitled to his Ph.D., his classification
numbers, or, more to the point, to his pay check. (pp. 300-301)
In the limo, with Halyard trying to get through
the crowds of the revolt. Halyard to driver:]
"I
don't know what's going on, and neither do you. Now drive to the police
station, do you understand?" said Halyard.
"You
think you can order me around just because you've got a Ph.D. and I've got
nothing but a B.S.?"
"Do
as he says," hissed Khashdrahr, placing the point of his knife in the back
of the driver's neck again.
The
limousine moved down the littered, now-deserted streets toward the headquarters
of Ilium's keepers of the peace.
The
street before the police station was snow-white, paved with bits of punctured
pasteboard: the fifty-thousand-card deck with which the Ilium personnel and
crime-prevention machines had played their tireless games — shuffling, dealing,
off the bottom, off the top, out of the middle, palming, marking, reading,
faster than the human eye could follow, controlling every card, and implacably
protecting the interests of the house, always the house, any house. (p. 305)
Chapter 34 [The day
after the Revolution; the authorities have surrounded Ilium and demanded the
leaders of the Revolution, plus total surrender or face a siege for six months.
The leaders here, a little drunk]
"You
know," said Paul at last, "things wouldn't have been so bad if they'd
stayed the way they were when we first got here [to Ilium and the Ilium Works]
Those were passable days, weren't they?" He and Finnerty were feeling a
deep melancholy rapport now, sitting amid the smashed masterpieces, the brilliantly
designed, beautifully made machines. A good part of their lives and skills had
gone into making them, making what they'd helped to destroy in a few hours.
"Things
don't stay the way they are," said Finnerty. "It's too entertaining
to try to change them. Remember the excitement of recording Rudy Hertz's
movements, then trying to run automatic controls from the tape?"
"It
worked!" said Paul.
"Damn
right!"
"And
then putting lathe group three together," said Paul. "Those weren't
our ideas of course."
"No,
but we got ideas of our own later on. Wonderful ideas," said Finnerty.
"Happiest I ever was, I guess, Paul; so damn engrossed. I never looked up
to notice anything else."
"Most
fascinating game there is, keeping things from staying the way they are."
"If
only it weren't for the people, the goddamned people," said Finnerty,
"always getting tangled up in the machinery. If it weren't for them, earth
would be an engineer's paradise."
"Let's
drink to that."
They
did. (pp. 312-13)
"What
became of the Indians?" said Paul. […] ¶ The original Ghost Shirt Society
[…]
[Lasher:]
They found out the shirts weren't bulletproof, and magic didn't bother the U.S.
Cavalry at all."
"So
—?"
"So
they were killed or gave up trying to be good Indians […]."
"And
the Ghost Dance movement proved what?" said Paul.
"That
being a good Indian was as important as being a good white man — important
enough to fight and die for, no matter what the odds. The fought against the
same odds we fought against: a thousand to one, maybe, or a little more."
Paul
and Ed Finnerty looked at him incredulously.
"You
thought we were sure to lose?" said Paul huskily.
"Certainly,"
said Lasher, looking at him as though Paul had said something idiotic.
"But
you've been talking all along as though it were almost a sure thing," said
Paul.
"Of
course, Doctor," said Lasher patronizingly. "If we hadn't talked that
way we wouldn't have had that one chance in a thousand. But I didn't let myself
lose touch with reality."
Lasher,
Paul realized, was the only one who hadn't lost touch with reality. He, alone
of the four leaders, seemed unshocked by the course of events […] even,
inexplicably, at peace. […]
Finnerty
was covering his initial surprise at Lasher's statement, so perfect an apostle
was he. […]
Lasher
was fully awake now […]. "It doesn't matter if we win or lose, Doctor
[Proteus]. The important thing is that we tried. For the record, we tried!" […]
"What record?" said Paul.
Suddenly
Lasher underwent a transformation. He showed a side of himself he had
mentioned, but which Paul had found impossible to imagine.
And
with the transformation, the desk became a pulpit.
"Revolutions
aren't my main line of business," said Lasher, his voice deep and rolling.
"I'm a minister, Doctor, remember? First and last, I'm an enemy of the Devil,
a man of God!" (p. 314)
Chapter 35
The
brains of the Ghost Shirt Society were touring the strongpoints on the
frontiers of their Utopia [in Ilium]. And everywhere they found the same
things: abandoned posts, mounds of expended ammunition, and riddled machinery.
The
four had come to an exciting decision: during the six months of blockade
threatened by the authorities, they would make the ruins a laboratory, a
demonstration of how well and happily men could live with virtually no
machines. They saw now the common man's wisdom in wrecking practically
everything. (p. 316).
[Next
scene: Characters we've seen before getting some remaining machines working
again.]
(pp. 317-19)
[The four Ghost Shirt leaders passing a liquor
bottle, on their way to surrender; Lasher toasts:]
"[…]
— to the record."
The
bottle went around the group [to Finnerty and Prof. Ludwig von Neumann, former
PoliSci instructor and the fourth leader, both toasting the record …]
Paul
took the bottle and studied Lasher for a moment […]. Lasher, the chief
instigator of it all, was contented. A lifelong trafficker in symbols, he had
created the revolution as a symbol, and was now welcoming the opportunity to
die as one.
And
that left Paul. "To a better world," he started to say, but he cut
the toast short, thinking of the people
of Ilium, already eager to recreate the same old nightmare. He shrugged.
"To the record," he said, and smashed the empty bottle on a rock.
Von
Neumann considered Paul and then the broken glass. "This isn't the end,
you know," he said. "Nothing ever is, nothing ever will be — not even
Judgment Day."
"Hands
up," said Lasher almost gaily. "Forward March [sic]." (p. 320,
end of novel)
++++++++++++++++++++++
In case the embedded link doesn't work: Study
Guide for Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Player Piano
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