OK, so we have two guys, Wally and Andre, having a conversation (mostly one way) over dinner. The general topic is the human condition and in particular the best way to understand and approach life. Both men are NY city-based playwrights -- so by their very nature are well-read and perhaps overly philosophical.
Andre does most of the talking. Other than his being a creative and kooky person the main thing to understand about him is that he appears to be at the very top of Maslow's Hierarchy. He has no pressure to make money (he appears to have plenty) and he seems to feel absolutely no familial responsibilities. (He has a family but often leaves them at the drop of a hat to go off on some spiritual adventure on the other side of the world.)
Near the end of dinner, Wally shows us that he's much more pragmatic than Andre, so there is some respectful disagreement between the two. But here's one thing I think they both agreed on (in 1981, LOL). I call it The Predictably Grumpy Old Man School of Thought: [Humanity's best days are behind us. Technology is destroying everything. And nowadays almost everyone is shallow and lacks any real self-awareness.] 😂
Andre: "In fact, it seems to me quite possible that the 1960s represented the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished. And that this is the beginning of the rest of the future, now, and that from now on there will simply be all these robots walking around, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. And there will be nobody left almost to remind them that there once was a species called a human being, with feelings and thoughts. And that history and memory are right now being erased, and that soon no one will really remember that life existed on the planet."
Wow, you really nailed it, Andre. And so did the dude who said the same thing 40 years prior, and the dude who said the same thing 40 years prior to that, and so on until we get to the old caveman who grunted out something negative and pessimistic about the wheel. 🤣
