Something I read for my anth class and thought was kind of fun

In this world there was no room for personality, or the pursuit of the ego, or originality. Like office workers, civil servants, or school teachers, their daily conversation abounded with such words as ego, mankind, personality, originality. But all this was mere verbiage. What they meant by "human suffering" was some such nonsense as the discomfort of a hangover after a drunken night during which one has spent all one's money trying to seduce a woman.

... Some said they could not write because of military censorship, but the fact was that, war or no war, they had not the slightest idea how to write honestly on any subject. Truth or real feeling in writing has nothing to do with censorship. In whatever period these gentry had happened to live, their personalities would surely have displayed the same emptiness.

... Everything was based on group comradeship, and the individual talents of the members were used on a rotational basis with special emphasis on the traditional precepts of "duty" and "human feeling." The entire organization became more bureaucratic than the bureaucrazy itself. ... Their berets, their long hair, their ties, and their blouses were those of artists; but in their souls they were more bureaucratic than the bureaucrats.

This from "The Idiot" by Sakaguchi Ango. He was discussing the protagonist's contemporaries in post-war Japanese journalism.

Something I read for my anth class and thought was kind of fun

In this world there was no room for personality, or the pursuit of the ego, or originality. Like office workers, civil servants, or school teachers, their daily conversation abounded with such words as ego, mankind, personality, originality. But all this was mere verbiage. What they meant by "human suffering" was some such nonsense as the discomfort of a hangover after a drunken night during which one has spent all one's money trying to seduce a woman.

... Some said they could not write because of military censorship, but the fact was that, war or no war, they had not the slightest idea how to write honestly on any subject. Truth or real feeling in writing has nothing to do with censorship. In whatever period these gentry had happened to live, their personalities would surely have displayed the same emptiness.

... Everything was based on group comradeship, and the individual talents of the members were used on a rotational basis with special emphasis on the traditional precepts of "duty" and "human feeling." The entire organization became more bureaucratic than the bureaucrazy itself. ... Their berets, their long hair, their ties, and their blouses were those of artists; but in their souls they were more bureaucratic than the bureaucrats.

This from "The Idiot" by Sakaguchi Ango. He was discussing the protagonist's contemporaries in post-war Japanese journalism.

Something I read for my anth class and thought was kind of fun

In this world there was no room for personality, or the pursuit of the ego, or originality. Like office workers, civil servants, or school teachers, their daily conversation abounded with such words as ego, mankind, personality, originality. But all this was mere verbiage. What they meant by "human suffering" was some such nonsense as the discomfort of a hangover after a drunken night during which one has spent all one's money trying to seduce a woman.

... Some said they could not write because of military censorship, but the fact was that, war or no war, they had not the slightest idea how to write honestly on any subject. Truth or real feeling in writing has nothing to do with censorship. In whatever period these gentry had happened to live, their personalities would surely have displayed the same emptiness.

... Everything was based on group comradeship, and the individual talents of the members were used on a rotational basis with special emphasis on the traditional precepts of "duty" and "human feeling." The entire organization became more bureaucratic than the bureaucrazy itself. ... Their berets, their long hair, their ties, and their blouses were those of artists; but in their souls they were more bureaucratic than the bureaucrats.

This from "The Idiot" by Sakaguchi Ango. He was discussing the protagonist's contemporaries in post-war Japanese journalism.