Hell is Other Robots

by

So my son and I are watching reruns of FutureRama and the title of the episode was “Hell is Other Robots.” I laughed at the title and my son asked me why.

I replied, “It’s a play on a line from the French author Jean-Paul Sartre that goes, ‘Hell is other people.'”

“Huh,” said my son, “I guess he didn’t go out much.”

I think I will steer him away from the advanced literature courses in college to spare the professor migraines.

13 thoughts on “Hell is Other Robots”

  1. Sartre is dead and Stalinism is out of style (although he was perfectly willing to play his flute for the Nazis, when they were in town). I bet that nobody reads the insufferable jerk’s rubbish anymore.

  2. “Huh,” said my son, “I guess he didn’t go out much.”

    Your son is right. Sartre was in Berlin from 1933-34 on a scholarship, studying the writings of Husserl and Heidegger, and also working on his novel ‘La Nausée’. He was so busy studying and writing that he completely missed the National Socialist rise to power. When he went out to go buying groceries and saw the big parades with the swastikas on flags, he assumed that this simply was a kind of big folk festival.

  4. “When he went out to go buying groceries and saw the big parades with the swastikas on flags, he assumed that this simply was a kind of big folk festival.”

    And you believed him.

  5. Sometimes it’s an advantage to be ignorant.
    See, you had to learn, analyse and conclude that all this staff is an utter crap – and your son just skipped all this irrelevant knowledge alltogether. What a saving in time and energy! (I think he deserves his allowance raised).

    At least that was the logic my own son tried on me when I tried to explain who Beria was.

  7. “He really was that blind to reality.”

    His track record was strewing rose petals at the the feet of murderous tyrants. He changed sides, but not M-O’s.

  9. “I think I will steer him away from the advanced literature courses in college to spare the professor migraines.”

    To demonstrate my own version of “care fatigue”, I suggest that you not bother to spare the feelings of those silly professors.

    …on the other hand, I do support sparing your son from wasting his time listening to such over-educated geese.

  11. “We [sic] wasn’t strewing petals while he was at the university.”

    I have no direct knowledge of JPS’ life., and I wouldn’t waste 20 minutes doing research on the @$$#01&. Common experience is that a man who is an @$$#01& at 60 was an @$$#01& at age 20. Statements whitewashing any part of his life should be taken cum grano salis.

  12. Mencken said an intellectual is someone who believes that because a rose smells better than a cabbage , it will make better soup.

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