Life is visceral

After I posted my “Is SOA Dead?” entry, Joel Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5 reminded me of this by Spiro Agnew, in a speech, just down the road in Houston, Texas, on 22 May 1970, where VP Agnew said in response to the Vietnam War riots: “Subtlety is lost, and fine distinctions based on acute reasoning are carelessly ignored in a headlong jump to a predetermined conclusion.”

“Life is visceral rather than intellectual. And the most visceral practitioners of life are those who characterize themselves as intellectuals. Truth is to them revealed rather than logically proved. And the principal infatuations of today revolve around the social sciences, those subjects which can accommodate any opinion, and about which the most reckless conjecture cannot be discredited. Education is being redefined at the demand of the uneducated to suit the ideas of the uneducated.”

You can read the full text here or you can listen to it here. Why don’t people have diction like that anymore? Why have I taken to spelling everything the American way? And why are there no riots anymore over outrageous goverment actions?

7 Responses to “Life is visceral”


  1. 1 anthony April 15, 2009 at 6:11 pm

    that was a sidney blu song 🙂

  2. 2 Naaza(HO) July 26, 2009 at 10:39 am

    Sydney Blu – Senses And The Mind (Original Mix)

  3. 5 Jack Black November 18, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    I like how this applies to many aspects including, above and beyond, the ridiculous assumptions put forth by the religious sheep in our society.

  4. 6 Simon February 1, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    Because people in america are afraid now, common sense.


  1. 1 Oh, Now it’s legacy IT that’s dead. Huh? « Adventures in systems land Trackback on January 12, 2009 at 10:22 pm

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About & Contact

I'm Mark Cathcart, formally a Senior Distinguished Engineer, in Dells Software Group; before that Director of Systems Engineering in the Enterprise Solutions Group at Dell. Prior to that, I was IBM Distinguished Engineer and member of the IBM Academy of Technology. I am a Fellow of the British Computer Society (bsc.org) I'm an information technology optimist.


I was a member of the Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative Steering committee. Read more about it here.

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