Kurtgone
Kurt Vonnegut is dead. He's not in heaven, he hasn't passed on, he's just dead. He knew he would die. He didn't fear it. If you read "Man Without A Country" you will see that he felt he had lived too long and didn't want to see the further mess mankind would make of the planet. He felt that his generation and the generation after it had failed my generation, and suspected we would fail the next generation, if there is a next generation.
Nobody wants to talk about Vonnegut's pessimism or political outrage about the war in Iraq and our consumption of oil and global warming. The New York Times includes his poem Requiem, but not the context. The context is that the human race is killing itself and its planet, and doing so because it is shortsighted and stupid and cares more about sports and sky-god myths than it does about the importance of reality. We're monkeys who refuse to use our gift of intelligence.
The best way to honor Vonnegut is not to whine about how much Cat's Cradle meant to you but to fight for the things that mattered to him. To try and care for your fellow human beings and mankind as a species and to try to keep the world livable for his grandkids.
If you can't do that, well, then at least try, even if only for a day, to be kind. THAT'S what he would have wanted.
Nobody wants to talk about Vonnegut's pessimism or political outrage about the war in Iraq and our consumption of oil and global warming. The New York Times includes his poem Requiem, but not the context. The context is that the human race is killing itself and its planet, and doing so because it is shortsighted and stupid and cares more about sports and sky-god myths than it does about the importance of reality. We're monkeys who refuse to use our gift of intelligence.
The best way to honor Vonnegut is not to whine about how much Cat's Cradle meant to you but to fight for the things that mattered to him. To try and care for your fellow human beings and mankind as a species and to try to keep the world livable for his grandkids.
If you can't do that, well, then at least try, even if only for a day, to be kind. THAT'S what he would have wanted.