ToTD: Fran Lebowitz
Originally published at Enemy of Entropy. Please leave any comments there.
Take away a man’s actual sense of manhood-which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children-and you’ve got to give them something else. And they did.
This hideous religion that’s all over the country-these huge church-malls-that’s what substitutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A ‘community’ is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That’s just self-righteousness-incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic. People have become so rigid; their opinions seem to them like themselves. When that happens (and it has happened) people can’t change their minds. If you are identified by your opinions-if that is the very basis of yourself-how can you change your mind?
Fran Lebowitz, Ruminator Magazine interview with Susannah McNeely (August/September 2005)