Life is going to go in every direction as far out as it can get. It’s going to experience the garden of paradisal delights and the screaming meemies.
You know very well that after you die, and after everybody else that you’ve ever known about died, babies of all kinds—both human, animal, and vegetable—were born. And each one of them feels that it’s “I” in just exactly the same way that you do; feels that it’s the center of the universe. And therefore, every one of them is you. Only, this situation can only be experienced one at a time. So, you see: you will die and then someone else will be born. But it will feel like you—you, now. It will be, in other words, “I.” There is only one “I.” But it’s infinitely varied.
After a while you’ve accumulated all these memories, and they’re like mystery stories: you’ve got a shelf of mystery stories and you’ve read all of them. You want a surprise! You want a new situation; one where you don’t know what the outcome’s going to be. It’s part of the game rules thing. When we know the outcome of a game for certain, we cancel it and begin a new one in which the outcome is not certain. That’s what we want.
Everybody here, you see, is under sentence of death. And we’ve no idea how long it’ll take, but we’re as good as dead. So if you come to face with this, come to terms with it, and regard yourself as a dead man who has nothing to cling to except patterns of smoke in the air—you’re dropping, dropping, dropping, dropping, and there’s nowhere anything to hold on to; you’re as good as dead; give up, because there’s really nothing else to do—then immediately we discover in a mysterious way that this revives us. Through not clinging to your own life you acquire an enormous amount of courage. Because actually, the whole thing’s a dream.
All this thing now is finally epitomized in Disneyland. Disneyland is what we think of our children, of what they ought to have and what’s good for them. Disneyland is an absolute compound of fakes from beginning to end. Even the birds on the trees are made of plastic and warble through tiny loudspeakers which go through their hinged beaks. There are plastic animals all along the banks of the artificial rivers monotonously wagging their empty heads. There are plastic Indians who are chopping like this for ever and ever and ever. Why, you can go on a jungle voyage in the waters and thrill to the spectacle of a plastic hippopotamus rising its head out of the waters and being killed with a blank cartridge. There is a papier-mâché varnished model of the tree of the Swiss Family Robinson’s house which vibrates constantly to an umm-pa-pa band going boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity boppity forever. It’s on a loop tape. And there is nothing in the whole area in the way of—you know, it takes hours to get through the exhibits. And there isn’t a bar in the place! It’s all strictly popcorn, soda pop culture. And it’s a grizzly place! You know, it’s all plastic! But it’s all cutey-pie. It’s all tweetie-tweetie. It’s all kind of a cultural baby talk. The whole thing!