This appetite to choose death by pleasure if it is available to choose - this appetite of your people unable to choose appetites, this is the death.

Pleasure becomes a value, a teleological end in itself. It's probably more Western than U.S. per se.

I think TV promulgates the idea that good art is just art which makes people like and depend on the vehicle that brings them the art.

It's no accident that in a bureaucracy getting fired is called 'termination,' as in ontological erasure.

Suppose I were to give you a key ring [...] with a hundred keys, and I were to tell you that one of these keys will unlock it, this door we're imagining opening in onto all you want to be, as a player. How many of the keys would you be willing to try?'
[...]
'Well I'd try every darn one,' Rader tells Lyle.
[...]
'Then you are willing to make mistakes, you see. You are saying you will accept 99% error. The paralyzed perfectionist you say you are would stand there before that door. Jingling the keys. Afraid to try the first key.

Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.