tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post3635337476669565463..comments2024-03-28T00:11:33.489-04:00Comments on bensozia: Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-70591071322006563742022-07-28T04:16:28.816-04:002022-07-28T04:16:28.816-04:00"We pause now for a word from the philosopher...<i>"We pause now for a word from the philosophers - a short reminder regarding the matter of payment and cost. Nothing is paid back - that does not happen, not on earth.<br /><br />A favor cannot be paid back - neither can a wrong. We say a criminal pays for his crime when we lock him up; that a murderer pays for his murder when the state murders him; but really the state is hiding an unsightly object - society is merely sweeping its dirt under the carpet.<br /><br />We may sometimes manage to cure the thing called "crime", but the man called a "criminal" is never punished - he can be inconvenienced, or tormented, or done away with, but he cannot pay for what he has done. If the ledger is ever balanced, it is not by him but by some other man, having nothing to do with him. It is balanced by deeds of virtue; by unrelated good works - the evildoer's agony doesn't show on the books.<br /><br />Only that fiction known to us as money can be paid back. The true debt - the debt of a friend to a friend, or a foe to a foe - outlives the principals involved. So much for payment.<br /><br />Price. That's something else. There's a price for everything - there's nothing that does not have its cost. Joy and inspiration and mere pleasure have a market value precisely computed in terms of their opposites. The cost of youth is age. The cost of age is death. You want love? The cost of love is independence. You want to be independent do you? Then pay the price and know what it is to be alone. Your mother paid for you with pain.<br /><br />Nothing, nothing, in this living world is free. The free air costs you the life consuming effort of breath. Freedom itself is priced at the rate of the citizenship it earns and holds."</i><br /><br />Orson Welles Commentaries - July 28, 1946G. Verlorennoreply@blogger.com