RESHARED POST FROM ALEXANDER KRUEL

The second distinction between Happiton and reality is this. In Happiton, for fifteen minutes a day to make a noticeable dent, it would have had to be donated by all 20,000 citizens, adults and children. Obviously I do not think that is realistic in our country. The fifteen minutes a day per person that I would like to see spent by real people in this country is limited to adults (or at least people of high-school age), and I don’t even include most adults in this. I cannot realistically hope that everyone will be motivated to become politically active. Perhaps a highly active minority of five percent would be enough. It is amazing how visible and influential an articulate and vocal minority of,that size can be! So, being realistic, I limit ’my desires to an average of fifteen minutes of activity per day for five percent of the adult American population. I sincerely believe that with about this much work, a kind of turning point would be reached – and that at 30 minutes or 60 minutes per day (exactly as in Happiton), truly significant changes in the national mood (and hence in the global danger level) could be effected.

I think I have explained what Happiton was written for. Trigger activity it may not. I’m growing a little more realistic, and I don’t expect much of anything. But I would like to understand human nature. better, to understand what it is that makes us so much like stupid gnats dully buzzing above a freeway, unable to see the onrushing truck, 100 yards down the road, against whose windshield we are about to be smashed.

Alexander Kruel originally shared this post:

THE TALE OF HAPPITON By Douglas Hofstadter, June, 1983

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