Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn't always so lucky. Less than a century ago men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them. They could not name even one of the fifty-three portals to the soul. Gimcrack religions were big business. Mankind, ignorant of the truths that lie within every human being, looked outward — pushed ever outward. What mankind hoped to learn in its outward push was who was actually in charge of all creation, and what all creation was all about. Mankind flung its advance agents ever outward, ever outward. Eventually it flung them out into space, into the colorless, tasteless, weightless sea of outwardness without end. It flung them like stones. These unhappy agents found what had already been found in abundance on Earth — a nightmare of meaninglessness without end. The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death. Outwardness lost, at last, its imagined attractions. Only inwardness remained to be explored. Only the human soul remained terra incognita. This was the beginning of goodness and wisdom. What were people like in olden times, with their souls as yet unexplored?
Kurt Vonnegut - Sirens Of Titan
I recently started re-reading (what i consider, at least) the core of Vonnegut’s works and this is how it starts. I love it. The reason I wanted to do all this reading, is because recently i realized something. I always thought South Park was a huge influence on me growing up and I thought it made me the critical, cynical person I am. But that was not true. I never was the status quo warrior that South Park is and always was at it’s core. I never forgot that things could be better and that the suffering of people is real and important, and so I realized it was always Vonnegut who was the real influence on me. He wrote insanely nihilistic and cynical stuff, yet never forgot about what’s really important, in fact I would go as far as to say he wrote insanely nihilistic and cynical stuff because he never forgot that.