Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

At last he reached in and unfurled a blue and white pennant, the Armed Forces “E” that Bassett had won during the war as manager of the Philadelphia Works. A muted bugle played taps.

Soldiers come home from war to be impoverished financially, mentally, and socially but the big corps always get the title in the history books for revolutionizing some aspect of the process/ economy. Who did the real work and who deserves a medal? I think it can be argued both ways.

There’s something about war that brings out greatness. I hate to say that, but it’s true. Of course, maybe that’s because you can get great so quick in a war. Just one damn fool thing for a couple of seconds, and you’re great. I could be the greatest barber in the world, and maybe I am, but I’d have to prove it with a lifetime of great haircutting, and then nobody’d notice. That’s just the way peacetime things are, you know?

Interesting thought

But we cannot win good lives for ourselves in peacetime by the same methods we used to win battles in wartime. The problems of peace are altogether more subtle.

do we always need to have an extenuating circumstance to push the boundaries? Or is pressure actually just a catalyst to help boost revolution? How else do people become motivated?