I Would Just As Soon Be A Rattlesnake...
Some of you may know that I am a Humanist, not a Christian. But I say of Jesus, as all Humanists do, ‘’If what he said was good and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what can it matter if he was God or not?’’ If Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.
I would just as soon be a rattlesnake.
OK, now let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about sex. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them. Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families any more. It used to be that when a man and women got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
A few Americans, but very few, still have extended families. The Navahos. The Kennedys. But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man. When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex, not how to raise the kids, or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: ‘’You are not enough people!’’
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, the best possible news in any extended family.
They were going to take it to meet all its relatives, Ibos of all ages and sizes and shapes. It would even meet other babies, cousins not much older than it was. Everybody who was big enough and steady enough was going to get to hold it, cuddle it, gurgle to it, and say how pretty is was, or handsome.
Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?
I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family - make you an Ibo or a Navaho - or a Kennedy.
The least I can do is give you health tips. I’ve already mentioned sun screen. And don’t smoke cigarettes, which are as evil as Slobodan Milosovic.
But cigars are good for you. They are so healthful that there is even a magazine devoted to their enjoyment, with cigar-smoking role models on its cover - athletes, movie stars, rich guys. Why not the Surgeon General? Cigars, of course are made of trail mix, a blend of raisins, cashews, and Granola, which has been soaked for a week in maple syrup. To celebrate the end of your graduation day, why not eat a cigar at bedtime?
No cholesterol!
Guns are also good for people. No nicotine and no cholesterol. As your Congress person if that isn’t so. Incidentally, if somebody asks you whether you are a Liberal or a Conservative, tell’em this: ‘’Listen, Buster - I’m a graduate of college. They taught me to think for myself there. You want to know if I’m a Liberal or a Conservative? I’m both of those, and neither one.
‘’Go jump in the lake. Go climb a tree.’’
I have so far quoted Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Hammurabi and Jesus Christ. I now give you Sir William Gilbert, of the team of Gilbert and Sullivan:
I often think it’s comical
how nature always does contrive
That every boy and every gal,
That’s born into the world alive,
Is either a little Liberal,
Or else a little Conservative.
What the heck. While I’m at it, why don’t I give you Eugene Victor Debs, the great labor leader who ran for President three times on the Socialist ticket, and who died in 1926, when I was four. ‘’As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’’
That’s worth repeating: ‘’As long as there’s a lower class, I’m in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’’
Wouldn’t you like to say that when you get out of bed every morning, with the roosters crowing: ‘’As long as there is a lower class, I am in it. As long as there is a criminal element, I am of it. As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.’’
Excuse me. I beg your pardon. I’m receiving signals from CNN in my bridgework ...
Kurt Vonnegut
Commencement Speech
Agnes Scott College
May 5, 1999