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Free Association: by Ben Mack, author of Poker Without Cards I had a dream Bill Hicks made the following speech. "Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a comedian, I came into close contact with stupidity, righteousness, and disease; with the inability to treat ignoramuses because of lack of listening; with the stupefication provoked by continual blathering and punishment of fake patriotism, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as dues to be paid to a sacred club, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming a famous comedian or making a significant contribution to rock and roll: I wanted to help those people." "How does one actually carry out a work of social welfare? How does one unite individual endeavor with the needs of society?" "For this task of organization, as for all revolutionary tasks, fundamentally it is the individual who is needed. The revolution does not, as some claim, standardize the collective will and the collective initiative. On the contrary, it liberates one's individual talent. What the revolution does is orient that talent. And our task now is to orient the creative abilities of all entertainment professionals toward the tasks of social welfare." "We must begin to erase our old concepts. We should not go to the people and say, 'Here we are. We come to give you the wisdom of our presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your ignorance of elementary things.' We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit. However, we should never be so humble as to tolerate their intolerance. Instead, we should hold them accountable, truly accountable to what they say they stand for. In many instances in America, this is the words of Jesus. If that be their choice, then ask them to demonstrate these words in action. If there choice be otherwise, let them demonstrate the good in those words." "Later, we will realize many times how mistaken we were in concepts that were so familiar they became part of us and were an automatic part of our thinking. Often we need to change our concepts, not only the general concepts, the social or philosophical ones, but also sometimes our concepts of entertainment and attention economy." "We shall see that ignorance should not be treated as it is in big-city schools. We shall see that the educator has to be a farmer also and plant new ideas and sow, by example, the desire to consume new notions, to diversify the nutritional structure which is so limited, so poor." "One of the most stringently enforced rules of censorship is that crime does not pay, showing that crime does not pay shows that the system is working. However, there are a whole group of people that regularly perform acts, that are outside of the law, and profit from these illegal activities; and have no worries of being caught. These are modern day pirates." "If we plan to redistribute the wealth of those who have too much in order to give it to those who have nothing; if we intend to make creative work a daily, dynamic source of all our happiness, then we have goals towards which to work." |
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