But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving chil… - Theodore Sturgeon

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But why write such rotten scripts? If what you say is so, everybody’s where they want to be, even beggars with sores on their shins and starving children and guys being tortured in jails?” She nodded, watching me. I said, “I can’t accept that.”
She waited a bit and then almost smiled. “Unacceptable?” She asked softly.
And that rang a bell. “Unacceptable … ‘to accept the unacceptable.’ You said that, in the seminar. But I can’t remember why you said it.”
“Yes you can,” she said, and waited. I drew a total blank this time, and I guess she knew it, because she gave me a nudge: “You say you don’t belong here. Is ‘here’ — unacceptable?”
“Yes,” I said without hesitation. “Then,” she asked, “why did you write this script?” “You mean — the me out there?” She nodded. I thought about that, and then mumbled, “I put it down to — curiosity? That’s all. I mean, throwing yourself into imperfect places, into pain and disappointment and well, the unacceptable — it just doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It sure doesn’t … unless …” I felt my eyes get big. “Unless those, uh, entities want to do what you said — to learn to accept the unacceptable. Even if they have to create it. That doesn’t make sense.”
“It doesn’t? Suppose they can’t go on unless they learn that.”
“Go on? Go on where?” She shrugs. “Everything living has to go on. Seed to shrub, shrub to tree, egg to bird.”
“You mean — evolve. They have to learn to accept the unacceptable in order to evolve into — whatever’s next for them.” Surprisingly, she laughed. She said, “You keep on saying ‘they.

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About Theodore Sturgeon

Theodore Sturgeon (born Edward Hamilton Waldo, 26 February 1918 – 8 May 1985) was an American author of science fiction, essayist, and poet.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Pen Names: E. Waldo Hunter
Birth Name: Edward Hamilton Waldo
Also Known As: Ted
Alternative Names: Ted Sturgeon
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It means "Ask the next question." Ask the next question, and the one that follows that, and the one that follows that. It's the symbol of everything humanity has ever created, and is the reason it has been created. This guy is sitting in a cave and he says, "Why can't man fly?" Well, that's the question. The answer may not help him, but the question now has been asked. The next question is what? How? And so all through the ages, people have been trying to find out the answer to that question. We've found the answer, and we do fly. This is true of every accomplishment, whether it's technology or literature, poetry, political systems or anything else. That is it. Ask the next question. And the one after that.

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You cannot be objective about this because you have been indoctrinated, sermonized, drenched, imbued, inculcated and policed on the matter since first you wore blue booties. You come from a time and place in which the maleness of the male, and the femaleness of the female, and the importance of their difference, were matters of almost total preoccupation.

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