Oh, I don't know. Trying to save the world one relatively unimportant issue at a time

- My current answer to the question "What's wrong?"

Today is the first anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death. Which, as he might say, is purely coincidental.

And one of his most famous quotes is this: "We are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."

But he also expressed a profound sense of caring for mankind. He once proposed an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that called for every human being to be welcomed at birth and given meaningful work to do.

I know that a lot of, as we might say, important people read this blog. And a lot of people I respect. And I wonder, as I wonder for myself, how much of what you do in an average day would you say matters worth a damn?

The tragedy of the planet was that its scientists had found ways to extract time from topsoil and the oceans and the atmosphere — to heat their homes and power their speedboats and fertilize their crops with it; to eat it; to make clothes out of it; and so on. They served time at every meal, fed it to household pets just to demonstrate how rich and clever they were. They allowed great gobbets of it to putrefy to oblivion in their overflowing garbage cans...
- Vonnegut, Jailbird

I once heard myself described as being embittered with humanity because of its wasteful acts. That notion distresses me. My real feeling is that human beings are too good for life. They've been put in the wrong place with the wrong things to do.
- Vonnegut, interview in 1980