Comment by olddustytrail
2 days ago
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
2 days ago
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix
How is that supposed to make anyone click on an ad?
Just to expand upon the reference, the comment you responded to is the first stanza of Allen Ginsberg poem "Howl" [0] published in 1956, which is what Hammerbacher paraphrased in the quote that I shared. "Howl" is amazing on its own though, and I highly recommend that people read the whole thing and/or watch the 2010 film about Ginsberg's life where James Franco recites it in its entirety[1]. And as a follow-up, I also highly recommend Scott Alexander's "Meditations on Moloch" that takes inspiration from the poem to analyze societal failures of coordination.
[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49303/howl
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049402/
[2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
Thanks for adding the background, much more helpful than my glib nonsense.
I feel that Meditations on Moloch should be mandatory study for anyone who lives in a society.