Modern life

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And the wind shall say:
"Here were decent godless people:
Their only monument the asphalt road
And a thousand lost golf balls."

T.S. Eliot

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Eliot, T. S. The Rock. 1934, Sadler's Wells Theatre, London, England, UK, pt. 1.

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Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suite on hire purchased in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats that you've spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life...but why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin?

Trainspotting

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Trainspotting. Directed by Danny Boyle, Channel Four Films/Figment Films/Noel Gay Motion Picture Company, 1996.

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A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.

Albert Camus

The Fall

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Camus, Albert. La Chute [The Fall]. Editions Gallimard, 1956.

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Give us this day our television, and an automobile, but deliver us from freedom.

Masculin Féminin

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Masculin Féminin [Masculine Feminine]. Directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Anouchka Films-Argos Films/Sandrews-Svenskfilmindustri, 1966.

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The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.

Václav Havel

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Havel, Vaclav. Letter to Olga Havlova. 5 Oct. 1981.

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The sea of faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd;
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Matthew Arnold

Dover Beach

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Original Citation

Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach." New Poems. London: Macmillan and Co., 1867, st. 3, 4.

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Arnold, Matthew. "Dover Beach." Dover Beach and Other Poems. Dover Publications, 2012, st. 3, 4.

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It was at the highest point in the arc of a bridge that I became aware suddenly of the depth and bitterness of my feelings about modern life, and of the profoundness of my yearning for a more vivid, simple, and peaceable world.

John Cheever

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Cheever, John. "The Angel of the Bridge." The New Yorker, 13 Oct. 1961.

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We are becoming like cats, slyly parasitic, enjoying an indifferent domesticity. Nice and smug in "the social," our historic passions have withdrawn into the glow of an artificial coziness, and our half-closed eyes now seek little other than the peaceful parade of television pictures.

Jean Baudrillard

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Baudrillard, Jean. Cool Memories: 1980-1985. Editions Galilee, 1987, ch. 1.

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Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things.

Willa Cather

Death Comes for the Archbishop

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Cather, Willa. Death Comes for the Archbishop. Alfred A. Knopf, 1927, bk. 9, ch. 6.

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They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot,
With a pink hotel,
A boutique, and a swinging hot spot.

Joni Mitchell

Big Yellow Taxi

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Mitchell, Joni. "Big Yellow Taxi." Ladies of the Canyon. Reprise Records, 1970.

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The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.

The Shawshank Redemption

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The Shawshank Redemption. Directed by Frank Darabont, Castle Rock Entertainment, 1994.

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Either everyone feels like this a little bit and they’re just not talking about it or I am completely fucking alone.

Fleabag

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"Episode #1.6." Fleabag, written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, directed by Harry Bradbeer, season 1, episode 6, Two Brothers Pictures, 2016.

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No, I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, who to love and how to tell them.

Fleabag

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"Episode #2.4." Fleabag, written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, directed by Harry Bradbeer, season 2, episode 4, Amazon Studios and British Broadcasting Corporation, 2019.

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Freedom, though it has brought him independence and rationality, has made him isolated and, thereby, anxious and powerless.

Erich Fromm

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Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. Farrar & Rinehart, 1941, foreword.

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The life of white men is slavery. They are prisoners in towns or farms. The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country, and live in our own fashion.

Sitting Bull

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Original Citation

Sitting Bull. Statement to journalist James Creel. 1882.

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Sitting Bull. Quoted in Great Speeches by Native Americans, edited by Bob Blaisdell. Dover Publications, 2012.

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Our gadget-filled paradise suspended in a hell of international insecurity.

Reinhold Niebuhr

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Niebuhr, Reinhold. Pious and Secular America. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958.

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In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.

Robert Runcie

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Runcie, Robert. Speech in London. 6 Dec. 1988, London, England, UK.

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In the deep windings of the grove, no more
The hag obscene, and the grisly phantom dwell;
Nor in the fall of mountain-stream, or roar
Of winds is heard the angry spirit's yell.

James Beattie

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Beattie, James. The Minstrel; Or, The Progress of Genius. A Poem. London: E. & C. Dilly, 1774, bk. 2, st. 47.

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You have riches and freedom here but I feel no sense of faith or direction. You have so many computers, why don't you use them in the search for love?

Lech Walesa

Quoted in The Daily Telegraph

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Walesa, Lech. Quoted in Daily Telegraph. 14 Dec. 1988.

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The orgasm has replaced the Cross as the focus of longing and the image of fulfilment.

Malcolm Muggeridge

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Muggeridge, Malcolm. Tread Softly, for You Tread on My Jokes. Collins, 1966.

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