BIFF (with enthusiasm): Listen, why don’t you come out West with me?
HAPPY: You and I, heh?
BIFF: Sure, maybe we could buy a ranch. Raise cattle, use our muscles. Men built like we are should be working out in the open.
HAPPY (avidly): The Loman Brothers, heh?
BIFF (with vast affection): Sure, we’d be known all over the counties!...Baby, together we’d stand up for one another, we’d have someone to trust.
HAPPY: If I were around you...
BIFF: Hap, the trouble is we weren’t brought up to grub for money. I don’t know how to do it.
HAPPY: Neither can I!
BIFF: Then let’s go!
I wonder when "Western civilization" (whatever that is) will collectively realize that their colonialist zeal is a symptom of failure. It's a sign that the values of Western society, i.e. the values of post-Roman Christian Europe, have never been satisfying or sufficient—it's like the Western mind can't make up its mind whether they've built a Heaven on Earth, or a Hell. either Western civilization is the greatest ever seen, or civilization itself is bunk and we should all be scattered into isolated family farms waiting for Jesus to show up.
but there's an escape hatch. "it's my circumstances. it's where I'm living. it's the people around me, that's the reason I'm unhappy. if only I could start over somewhere else—!" in a similar spirit do people with addictions hope that they can somehow move away from their habit—that maybe if they abruptly change where or how they live, dump their old friends and get new ones, &c. then somehow everything will be different and their cravings will simply...not matter any more.
(I get very bitter after this point)
and so "the West" keeps restlessly spreading, spreading, spreading into every pore and crevice, like a mold spreading over the surface of a rotting orange. nowhere has it found ultimate happiness but it keeps going. "maybe if we seize hold of the Holy Land, then it'll be different, we'll have the secret to infinite success. maybe if we all start living in the 'Metaverse'. maybe we'll be happy when Elon Musk is King of Mars." there's always some fresh horizon—some ungrabbed place.
(and meanwhile, the most stalwart defenders of The West grab greedily for every baby—demanding that every baby be preserved, demanding more babies and more, and yes there's contemptible racist reasons for that, but there's also this pathetic Christian reason: they're desperately hoping one of those babies is the Second Coming.)
when is this farce going to end
~Chara