from the motion picture Network screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Arthur Jensen: Hello, Mr. Beale. They tell me you're a mad man. Howard Beale: Only desultorily. Jensen: How are you now? Beale: As mad as a hatter. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you have merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow; tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in term of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems: one vast and interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars: petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multidollars, reichsmarks, krona, rubles, pounds and shekles. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and subatomic, and gallactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will attone! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little 21" screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and ATT, and du Pont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions and compute the price/cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corportations, inexorably determined by the inevitable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war or famine, oppression or brutality; one vast and ecumenical holding company, for which all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will own a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquelized, all boredom...amused. _______________________________________________ Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
