On the passing away

Of Arthur Miller, there is this from the New York Times via Deccan Herald. No I don't know anything about Arthur Miller other than that he is a playwright and even then I keep getting confused between him and the other one - the 'Tropic of Cancer' Miller. But I found the article good. It rings a few warning bells for Americans and some for us too I suppose. Like here:

Arthur Miller, in his autobiography, Timebends, quoted the great physicist Hans Bethe as saying, “Well, I come down in the morning and I take up a pencil and I try to think...”

It’s a notion that appears to have gone the way of the rotary phone. Americans not only seem to be doing less serious thinking lately, they seem to have less and less tolerance for those who spend their time wrestling with important and complex matters.

If you can’t say it in 30 seconds, you have to move on. God made man and the godless evolutionists are on the run. Donald Trump (“You're fired!”) and Paris Hilton (“That’s hot!”) are cultural icons.

And this:

“The longer I worked, the more certain I felt that as improbable as it might seem, there were moments when an individual conscience was all that could keep a world from falling.”

For the United States, which had launched a misguided, pre-emptive war in Iraq, is shipping prisoners off to foreign countries to be tortured and has pressed the rewind button on matters of social progress, this may be one of those moments.

And this definitely:

Mr Miller understood early that keeping the population entertained was becoming the paramount imperative of the US. Americans are now all but buried in entertainment and the republic is running amok.

The last quote is quite relevant for India too I guess. TV as the opium of the masses and classes.