you cannot have a community, not even a corporation.
corporation.
It's risky,
very risky to trust other people,
because they may let you down.
But on the whole, if you do trust them,
the chances are perhaps
that the system will work
simply because they are trusted.
And as soon as you've got a system
where, for example, in a supermarket,
there are mirrors all over the place, TV
cameras watching everything, all kinds
of checks on the cashiers that they
won't sneak off with something.
You've got a system that increasingly
won't work
because nobody will want to work there.
One of the major reasons for hippies and dropouts
dropouts
is that human beings don't want to work
under conditions like that
because they are mechanical conditions
and the mechanism
is quite distinct from the organism
because the mechanism is arranged on
linear plans the book whereas the
organism transcends that.
What do you really want?
I have proposed that there be an
entirely new kind of college entrance examination
examination
in which instead of answering a lot of
silly questions, you write for about 20
pages on your idea of paradise.
It can be any kind of paradise you want.
It can be very spiritual. It can be very
sensuous. But spell it out. What do you
Then you will hand this thesis in to an
assigned tutor on the faculty and he'll
read it over
and examine you closely as to whether
this is what you really want
and being very careful about what you
desire because there's a good saying be
careful of what you desire.
So this is the problem of thinking out carefully
carefully
where it is that you want to go. I as a
philosopher, mere philosopher,
always insist that I be paid for my work
and I get the highest fee I can get. And
people say, "Well, you're just out for money."
money."
because I give most of it away.
My own needs being extremely simple.
I don't even own a television set.
You know, it's a very simple life. But
I've got enough.
You see, a lot of people don't feel
happy unless they have another thing
beyond money, which is called status.
And status to a very large extent in our
economy consists in
conspicuous consumption
in having this thing and that thing and
the other thing in having a swimming
pool, a uh Ferrari, uh certain kind of
clothes and uh certain kind of house
with an enormous round style picture
window and so on and so on and so on.
And we think uh we need all that because
we've been persuaded by a certain kind
of propaganda
because we haven't asked ourselves
whether that was what we really wanted.
In other words, we've been propagandized
into thinking what we wanted. I remember
my daughter when she was in high school
insisted that she had to have a certain
number of Kashmir sweaters.
In those days, I couldn't afford them.
I said, "My dear, do you really want these
these or
or
is it just that you've been reading ads
in the magazine or listening to the
other children?" Because you see,
schools are places where you send your
child to be brought up by other children,
children,
but they all think they got to have
this, they got to have that.
And uh they don't really want it.
If they sat back and considered, do I
need all that? Is this trip really necessary?
necessary?
They would come to the conclusion that
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