Paul Mooney: The check is not in the mail, the stagecoach is not coming. It’s all bullshit.
Mary Midgley: But they didn’t get used to that in the hinterland of the United States.
Mooney: Listen, I knew when to get out of there.
Midgley: Imagery is terribly important, you see.
Mooney: Oh yeah. Of course. The person is somewhere else.
•••
Midgley: But if we believe this, it produces a belief in progress, which means that whatever we do is better than whatever there was before, and we only want more of it.
Mooney: It was meant to be, you know? And they were all so fucking high. (Laughs.)
Midgley: The visions of the imagination are a crucial and real part of human life, and what is operating there is real.
Mooney: I remember. People don’t like to see it written down. It doesn’t change what’s right and what’s wrong.
Midgley: Yes, yes, that’s the way to start, I think.
•••
Mooney: Just like the hippies. I had no idea they were that happy.
Midgley: This is simply false. They are ways of assembling facts.
Mooney: They all eat out of the same bowl. All of it.
Midgley: You find a new food source, or you start photosynthesis, or something of that sort.
Mooney: A bunch of people would come and stay there with us, because nobody had any money, and we let them all sleep on the floor and in the bathtub or wherever.