Living In A Small Town Anywhere Means

What Is A Hero Without Love For Mankind.

Recently, The Science Fiction Writer Arthur C. Clarke Talked About The Ways The Lives Of Human Beings Will Be Changed In The Next Century. At Least Half Of Them I Didn't Understand At All, Though I'm Sure That Kids Today Would Know Exactly What He Meant. I'm Somewhere In The Past. I Do Think, However, That Our Brains Have Been Damaged By Technology. I Meet Kids Who Don't Seem To Be Capable Of Reading A Long Sentence, Much Less A Long Book.

We Always Seem To Be Surprised By Events, Especially By Catastrophes, But Also By Wonderful Events. Look At 1990, The Year That The Soviet Union Collapsed And Apartheid In South Africa Collapsed And The Berlin Wall Came Down. I Don't Know Anyone Who Foresaw Those Events. It Seems To Me That As A Species We Are Constantly Trying To Adapt Ourselves To The Unexpected. In The Meantime, We Talk As If We Are In Control, And We're Not. This Seems To Me To Be The Truth About The Twentieth Century.

[the Golden Notebook] Was Not A Trumpet For Women's Liberation. It Described Many Female Emotions Of Aggression, Hostility, Resentment. It Put Them Into Print. Apparently What Many Women Were Thinking, Feeling, Experiencing, Came As A Great Surprise. Instantly A Lot Of Very Ancient Weapons Were Unleashed, The Main Ones, As Usual, Being On The Theme Of "she Is Unfeminine", "she Is A Man-hater".

I Think People Are Always Looking For Gurus. It's The Easiest Thing In The World To Become A Guru. It's Quite Terrifying. I Once Saw Something Fascinating Here In New York. It Must Have Been In The Early Seventies--guru Time. A Man Used To Go And Sit In Central Park, Wearing Elaborate Golden Robes. He Never Once Opened His Mouth, He Just Sat. He'd Appear At Lunchtime. People Appeared From Everywhere, Because He Was Obviously A Holy Man, And This Went On For Months. They Just Sat Around Him In Reverent Silence. Eventually He Got Fed Up With It And Left. Yes. It's As Easy As That.