Posted by sigismund on November 5, 2010, at 13:56:15
In reply to Re: T--t-t-t-t-t-t-truth » sigismund, posted by floatingbridge on November 5, 2010, at 11:12:16
>There, too? I thought it was confined to the manifest destiny of the colonies and the wild wild west. Peculiarly American.
The original idea comes from Leslie Farber, a New York psychoanalyst from the 60s who wrote a wonderful little book called something like 'Sex drugs suicide and the good life'. I can't see that around anywhere and he died a long time ago but there is on Amazon "The Ways of the Will". He spent time writing about how psychiatry unfortunately sometimes made the willfulness worse. Then there was William Burroughs's amusing thought that if the average American could, he would hop down into his digestive system and shovel the sh*t out his *rs* (if you will excuse my French).
Are we the same here? It is the most interesting thing about Babble for me. I'm not sure. There are lots of American refugees here where I live, anyway.
America was started by religious dissidents. Australia started as a prison. You have names like Springfield. We have names like Useless Loop and Mt Misery. You had a revolt over taxes. We had a revolt over rum. It took a long time to subjugate the Indians. We were quicker. Al Sweringen in the wonderful 'Deadwood' talks about his life (obviously in the American west) and mentions he spent a couple of years in Australia. 'That was a waste of time' he says.
poster:sigismund
thread:968403
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20101030/msgs/968632.html