Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“Shah says, if these not slaves, how you get them to do what they do?” “Patriotism,” said General of the Armies Bromley sternly. “Patriotism, damn it.”

“For generations they’ve been built up to worship competition and the market, productivity and economic usefulness, and the envy of their fellow men—and boom! it’s all yanked out from under them. They can’t participate, can’t be useful any more. Their whole culture’s been shot to hell. My glass is empty.”

“What about the scientists? It seems to me that—” “Outside the discussion,” said Lasher impatiently. “They simply add to knowledge. It isn’t knowledge that’s making trouble, but the uses it’s put to.”

“Questions? Questions, my boy?” “He wanted to know if we weren’t doing something bad in the name of progress.”

“I’m doctor of cowshit, pigshit, and chickenshit,” he said. “When you doctors figure out what you want, you’ll find me out in the barn shoveling my thesis.”

“Him? Doctor Garson? Jimmy, son, boy—have you seen the bags under his eyes? Have you seen the lines in his face? He’s carryin’ the world around on his shoulders, Jimmy. That’s what a high I.Q. got him, Doctor Garson. Do you know how old he is?” “An awful old man, Ma.” “He’s ten years younger than your Pa, Jimmy. That’s what brains got him.”

“Well—there’s some pretty stiff rulings about that. You can’t play college football, and go to school. They tried that once, and you know what a silly mess that was.”

People are finding that, because of the way the machines are changing the world, more and more of their old values don’t apply any more. People have no choice but to become second-rate machines themselves, or wards of the machines.”

“The main business of humanity is to do a good job of being human beings,” said Paul, “not to serve as appendages to machines, institutions, and systems.”