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Lena Dunham Claims Fame Makes Her Sick… Plus a Few Numbers

It’s like with all chronic irritants: just when you seem to forget about them altogether, something random will cause them to flare up… In a casual conversation Lena Dunham’s new memoir popped up. I wouldn’t know anything about it… But now… I got triggered. And you know how it is with mosquito bites—once you start scratching, you can’t stop.


It just had to happened, didn’t it?

It’s like with all chronic irritants: just when you seem to forget about them altogether, something random will cause them to flare up…

We were just talking about Beef‘s second season, my daughter and I. I remarked how shocking it was that the Ashley character was so obsessed with childbearing. An attitude rarely observed nowadays not only among gen-zers, but the millennials as well…

And that, somehow, prompted my daughter to tell me that Aubrey Plaza (six months my daughter’s senior) was expecting. With whom?—I wondered, since her husband passed away last year. Christoffer Abbott. Oh, he is cool. We saw him on Broadway in The House of Blue Leaves with Ben Stiller, Edie Falco, and Jennifer Jason Leigh back in 2011. He was also in the first season of The Sinner…

...And Girls…

As if I could ever forget! He is the one who left the show because he got fed up with Lena Dunham.

By the way—my daughter said—I just saw a clip of her on The Drew Barrymore Show. I don’t know why it was pushed to me. But some things she was talking about were quite…

Why, dammit?!! Lena Dunham—my personal symbol of undeserved attention and unrestrained nepotism! Please, stop!—I wanted to plea…

Yet… Why was she on Drew?—I asked. Is she promoting a new project? I mean, Too Much1 just came out last July… (I know because Netflix tried to push it on me.)

She wrote a new memoir…

All these tidbits are such peripheral, insignificant bleeps on the cultural radar. I wouldn’t know anything about them… But now… I got triggered. And you know how it is with mosquito bites—once you start scratching, you can’t stop. And now I am up to my ears in this…

The pushy dissemination.

My daughter shouldn’t have been surprised that Lean Dunham’s appearance on Drew was pushed at her after she decided to notice the news of Aubrey Plaza’s pregnancy. The actress starred in her late husband’s Jeff Baena‘s The Little Hours with one of the four Girls—Jemima Kirke. And there is zero degrees of separation from the future father. That’s how it works…

The only way we can stop the activity trackers from curating our content feeds is by quitting the whole online existence entirely. And there are probably brave and admirable people who do just that.

But I don’t think I have the emotional strength for such radical acts. I can bitch and moan about feeling like a fly stuck in the world-wide web, yet I continue to submit. And the stuff continues to be pushed…

Even Anna Wintour has soft spots.

Of course, I had to look up Lena’s book on Amazon… Just to see the title and the description. (I know, I know—we do it to ourselves, we do!)

Famesick… Ah, I see. Was pursuing her creative ambitions worth “all the pains of fame“?—she invites her readers to ponder… Fatigue, addictions, sex, and everything in between… The struggle is real!

Then, probably on the same day, I was on IMDb looking up the year The Prestige came out… It’s a regular thing for me. I am a cinephile…. Plus, I frequently feel compelled to rate what I watch… I’ve been using the site for decades now. Naturally, since Amazon acquired it in 1998, the interconnections became inescapable. I search for something on Amazon Prime and then I’m flooded with the ads for those items on IMDb.

This time, however, the sidebar invited me to checkout the collection of photos from Met Gala 2026—Fashion Is Art. Deep inside I knew. Of course, I knew. And there she was: in a feathery thing of the signature Valentino Red hue. Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rhianna… and Lena Dunham.

And that, actually, made perfect sense…

Truth be told, Lena Dunham has always had a good sense of style. As well as personal ties—cultivated through parental wealth and art connections—with haute-couture houses. But so are thousands of other people.

Did you know that Anna Wintour personally selects the 700 or so invitees to the Gala and approves their outfits? She’s been doing it for nearly 40 years now. And even though she stepped down as Vogue’s editor-in-chief last year, she still carries that particular responsibility on as Condé Nast’s Global Chief Content Officer.

Still, Anna Wintour—widely known as a demanding, exacting, and formidable media executive—has her soft spots too. They get softer when she is affected by strong PR, off-kilter cultural airs, and the liberal feminism…

She has always been partial to Lena, making Ms. Dunham probably the only memoirist and fringe movie-TV-maker to be a Met Gala invitee. In fact, I already wrote about it twelve years ago when Lena beat Kim Kardashian for the March 2014 cover of Vogue.

As per usual, a few numbers…

Let’s see… Since Amazon holds about 50% share of the printed books selling market and about 80% of ebooks, its data makes it easier for us to do some guesstimations.

The best selling rankings

The book came out on April 14th, 2026. Dunham’s publisher announces right there above the description that the memoir was an “instant #1 New York Times bestseller”. In non-fiction sector, of course. Definitely a certified hit. To make that rank a book usually sells about 3,000-4,000 copies a day in

all outlets combined.

I don’t know how long it stayed at #1, but in its fifth week, it was #5. So, the initial impact is diminishing. And it was listed as #3 in the memoir section of Amazon’s Charts as of May 18th. That translates into 1,500-3000 copies a day.

Let us be generous here. Let’s say that the memoir sold 4,000 copies a day for the first two weeks and 3,000 for the following three. That gives us total of 119,000.

The Amazon reviews

We can try to prove this number further. The book already has around 1,500 Amazon Reviews. Those can only come from verified purchasers. (Unlike Goodreads ratings that can be entered by anyone with a free account, whether they bought, read, or even saw the book cover.)

From the marketing POV, Amazon reviews are “engagements”. So, naturally there are statistical sales probabilities attached. The publishing industry consensus and author data indicate that only a small fraction of readers leave a review. Of course.

And the rule of thumb is the “50x multiplier”, or 2% of all readers. That gives us 75,000 copies sold in 5 weeks via Amazon. Still on the same wave of generosity, let’s say that it represents 60% of overall sales, yielding us 125,000 copies in total. Very close.

The royalties

I have experience with both the publishing-house (CFO Techniques) and the self-publishing royalties(I Built This Prison). So, let me tell you.

A publishing house, which carries the responsibility for production and marketing costs, usually pays author 10-15% of the list price of the printed books and 15-25% for the ebooks. We are going to go with the higher percentages. So, Lena’s royalties are about $4.50 per printed copies and $2.50 per digital version.

Believe it or not, people still prefer to hold a real book in their hands. Print books dominate with 80% market share. Multiply this and that: we come to the total 5-weeks yield due to Lena of $512,500.

Not I’m Glad My Mom Died, but, impressive for a niche celebrity memoir anyway. Not surprising, of course, considering all the PR efforts with the promo circuit that includes The Drew Barrymore Show and such.

And it also probably entirely irrelevant as I don’t believe that Lena Dunham would bother writing anything on spec2. Also, her agents wouldn’t allow that.

So, the advance...

I doubt, of course, that Random House would expose themselves again to the loss they experienced with Lena’s previous book Not That Kind of Girl. Back in October 2012—just three months after Season 1 of Girls ended—they got themselves into the bidding war, which they won with a highly publicized $3.7 million advance, hoping for at least 1 million of books to be sold. According to Nielsen BookScan, their expectations were fulfilled only by about 30%.

Understandably, the advance Lena received for Famesick wasn’t publicly disclosed at all. Nevertheless, we can safely extrapolate that she received at least $1 million at the contract signing. Less agents’ commissions, less taxes.

Still, a needful chunk of change probably. As I estimate that the residuals from Girls—still available for streaming on Max—are drying out by now. Considering that Ms. Dunham created, starred, and produced it, wrote about 70% of the episodes, and directed a third of them, they used to be quite sizable. But it’s been nine years since the show closed, so now it’s down to less than 2% of the original payout level.

…and my rhetorical questions.

Which I can’t help but ask.

What fame?

Of course “people” know her… In Hollywood and within New York’s arty intelligentsia circles. Especially among indie-obsessed cinema lovers such as yours truly. But what do you think the probability of a random person you stop on the street knowing who Lena Dunham is? Don’t even go to rural Nebraska—try the Bronx. I think it’s not very high. I dare you.

Actually, Lena always had a bit of an exaggerated take on her success. I remember back in the Girls days, there was an interview, in which she lamented about some TSA agent giving her hard time at the airport. She was actually expecting him to say something like, “Love the show”. I vividly remember my shock at her delusion.

The truth is, when Girls originally aired, the show’s viewership consistently averaged between 600,000 and 800,000 per episode. And I seem to recall that the latter seasons dropped to something like 300,000 viewers. I mean, there are 270 million adults in this country.

Of course, it would be ridiculous to compare such an intellectually introspective and socially esoteric show as Girls, aired on a paid premium channel, to mass-appeal broadcasting blockbusters. On the other hand, another HBO show, Game of Thrones —same time, same price—managed to draw over 10 million viewers per episode.

And here is another question:

If something really makes you sick, wouldn’t you try to avoid it?

I feel a bit bewildered here… I mean, if being “famous” puts you in peril, if it affects your existence to the point of having a deteriorating effect on your physical wellbeing—what the hell are you doing prancing in front of paparazzis in 5-inch heels? At the event that bills itself as “the world’s most prestigious and glamorous”, where “FAME, wealth, power, social influence” come together.

Of course, Ms. Dunham has been discussing, essaying, and scripting her mental problems since her college-years YouTube videos. And surely the bravery of exposing yourself to the world takes its toll… But was it really such a big deal for your immediate artistic circle of friends and family to accept your creative choices? I mean, nudity—both physical and emotional—has been a habitual subject of Art since the ancient times.

On the other hand—after the euphoria of the entertainment industry’s attention ebbed—Lena could’ve naturally fallen into a down cycle. Maybe she was actually missing the “fame”.

But damning fame is so much more compelling, isn’t it? Appeals to everyone. To celebrities—always struggling with various insecurities and such. As well as to the general public that welcomes anything proving to them they dodged the fame bullet… So ripe for pitching and marketing!

And are you all better now after channeling all that pain through your book? Is that what readers are going to find at the end? The hopeful start of the new chapter of your life? Really? Good for you!

But it begs the most important question now… And believe you me, I’m asking it with all the compassion of a person who can relate to many a mental problem. Especially those of the body dysmorphia, OCD, and self-harm kind (I called that Chapter of I Built This Prison—Buckets of Tears and Blood)…

Girl, what could you possibly know about real pain?

You rode into “fame” you blame for your ills on the coattails of your famous-artist mother and her network of such friends as Meryl Streep. And didn’t she finance your breakout Tiny Furniture? And also played herself in it? You gave her the second billing!

Very good mother by my standards. Two personal thumbs up from me. I mean it. In spite of my utter distaste for nepotism. (I’m torn like that: maybe she genuinely believed in her daughter’s merits, not just layering the yellow bricks for her spawn…)

Now, try to imagine starting off and striving on without that bulldozing PR machine you were born into behind you. Like many thousands of aspiring writers, filmmakers, and artists.

Contemplate opening your heart and pouring your troubled soul out onto the pages of your memoir, then go through the struggles of self-publishing, and end up living with one review. How would you feel then?

Yet, objectivity is my highest priority.

I honestly believe that Ms. Dunham is actually controlled by an unparalleled driving force within her. I think Miriam Cohen is right: Lena IS The Girl Who Perseveres. She will never give up. Pains of fame be damned!

And my initial hunch was correct, by the way: it’s not just the memoir. There are plenty of other new endeavors too. In on-screen entertainment alone, Lena Dunham currently has four upcoming projects. A movie genred as “steamy romance”, which she wrote and directed, is in post-production. It stars Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, and Meg Ryan. Two TV series. Plus, another movie she will executively produced.

Two of these projects have the word “sex” in their titles. And one is still untitled. So, who knows… It’s all about the shock of Lena’s fantasies, isn’t it?

I probably will not live to see Ms. Dunham achieving actual artistic merit deserving the attention she gets. But I must say: that Valentino gown—just breathtaking… And so appropriately Lena! This is exactly what I imagine she can do: just wrap a giant boa around her naked body. Fabulous!

  1. In a typical outcome for practically all of Lena Dunham’s projects, the show garnered unduly kind critical reviews in such prominent US outlets as The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times. Yet, it had very moderate viewership and a mediocre 6.2 IMDb rating. A British reviewer writing for The Guardian was blunt: This pile of clichés, she said, amounted to “way, way too little”. Four months into airing, Netflix announced the show will not be renewed for the second season. ↩︎
  2. In hopes of success, without pre-existing deal with an advance. ↩︎

BOI Reporting: Wellcome, Big Brother?


If you are a business owner and/or executive and you’ve used an online processor, like LegalZoom, to set up your corporate affairs; or outsource some of your in-house functions to a large service provider, like Paychex, for instance; or employ a fairly sizable CPA company to audit your books – it is most likely that these business partners of yours have notified you at some point last year that you are a subject to the new type of government reporting – the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI), due for submission to Financial Crime Enforcement (FinCEN) bureau of the US Department of Treasury. 

The rest of the business owners – those without an exposure to large business and/or professional networks – especially the ones running those small, private, neighborhood companies we supposed to cherish as a backbone of the American economy…  Well, I don’t really know how they are meant to find out about this new reporting obligation. FinCEN promised to roll-out a whole awareness campaign with YouTube videos and stuff – but I personally haven’t seen anything like that being pushed at me. Maybe if you search for it, you’ll find something… But how would you know to look in the first place?

I personally discovered it via LegalZoom’s notification sent to an entrepreneur whose books I help to keep. She casually mentioned it to me – I somehow sensed it seriousness and looked into it. Mainly for the sake of the small business owners around me, but also out of the feeling of foreboding this bit of information gave me.

It turned out that FinCEN was formed in 1990 (Wow! The things that fly over our heads! Even if we are somewhat politically alert.) under the parentage of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence with an official purpose

“to combat domestic and international money laundering, terrorism financing, and other financial crimes”.

Naturally, it is a perfect agency to oversee the specific measures that have been formulated under the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) signed into power by Congress in 2021 – the federal law pushed through under the banner of

“the government’s efforts to make it harder for bad actors to hide or benefit from their ill-gotten gains through shell companies or other opaque ownership structures.”

                                                      fincen.gov, January 29th, 2024

(Again! What ordinary citizen paid attention to that piece of shocking legal maneuvering?!)

One such measure, formulated in March of 2023, is the BOI reporting. I don’t want bore my readers with every single rule and detail pertaining to this new corporate reporting duty. Just bear with me for a few important highlights I’m providing for those who didn’t dive into this issue yet. 

A Beneficial Owner is a person who directly or indirectly exercises substantial control over the reporting company or owns at least 25% of its interests. Now, all senior officers – specifically: President, CFO, General Counsel, CEO, and COO; anyone with an ability to appoint or remove officers or a majority of directors; anyone who is an “important decision-maker”; and anyone (listen to this catchall) who has “any other form of substantial control” are qualified as Beneficial Owners and must be reported as such to FinCEN.

There is an interesting caveat: if a person is not a senior officer, but, nevertheless, exercises significant control over the reporting company through her employment there, that person doesn’t need to be reported. I’m thinking: high-power controllers who value their privacy higher than the status, or simply don’t want to expose their personal info for open access, should stop vying for CFO positions (assuming, of course, the pay is satisfactory). 

Any and all corporations, LLCs, and other entities created through the filing of a document with a secretary of State or any other similar office in the US is obligated to report. I carefully studied the 23 exceptions and can vouch that I personally never dealt with an entity that would qualify for an exemption. Nevertheless, everyone who deals with corporate matters of their businesses/employers is encouraged to study the relevant material at BOI FAQ.

Anyone whom the reporting company authorizes  to act on its behalf may file the BOI report. And this authorized filer, whatever their relationship with the company may be, MUST submit her full name, email address, and phone number. 

The information the reporting company must submit about itself is: full legal name, any trade names (DBAs, etc.), current street address of the principal place of business (to be updated when changes), its jurisdiction of formation or registration, and TIN. The whole kit and caboodle.

For the beneficial owners the reportable data is as follows: name, DOB, residential address, and ID# – either US passport or state driver’s license – and the name of the latter’s jurisdiction. And guess what? The reported ID must be uploaded into the database! Some people may feel relieved that at least they are not demanding the SSN’s. But if you ask me: disclosing your picture ID and the place where you live! Seriously?

But get a load of this! In addition to the information on the entities, their beneficial owners, and those assigned to deal with this by their bosses, the financial crime fighters want to further collect the same info on the individuals they call “applicants” (starting with incorporating dates of January 1, 2024 and on), i.e. the individuals who directly file the documents that create or register the company and those who direct and control the filing. And that’s pretty much any intermediary agent whose services you may engage in the process: accountants, lawyers, formation services, even the messengers delivering the application packages into the hands of the clerks.     

FinCEN openly discloses that any Federal, State, local, and Tribe as well as “certain” foreign officials will be allowed the access to thus compiled database for activities broadly described as “related to national security, intelligence, and law enforcement.” No consents or even notices of the inquiries’ subjects are required. On the other hand, financial institutions need to obtain a reporting company’s agreement before being allowed to take a peek. But who in their right mind says “no” to a bank considering granting you a credit line, for example? Especially if it’s a small entrepreneurial business. Most eager CFO’s and CEO’s wouldn’t even bother asking who exactly will be looking.

The penalties for refusing or foregoing the BOI reporting include both civil and criminal repercussions: up to $500 per day of the violation, $10,000 fine, and up to 2 years of imprisonment.  

So, to summarize: millions and millions of Americans are now forced to make their personal information openly available for access by all and any domestic and international government entities as well as financial institutions, or risk criminal and civil prosecution. I absorbed all that, and I was like: Whoa! What?! George Orwell miscalculated his arrival by 40 years, for sure, but the Big Brother is definitely hear now – not in North Korea, Iran, Russia, China; but here in the United States of A as well as 30-something other “civilized” countries with similar regulations. Of course, I have to be objective about my reactions to such things: I was born and raised under the communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union. Therefore, I have a tendency of seeing things related to governmental interferences in darker lights than most American citizens. I mean, Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (1985) is the avant-garde realism to me, not a dystopian sci-fi as it’s conventionally classified.

Moreover, I’m a libertarian in my political convictions. Thus, personal and socio-economic freedoms are paramount to me. Even more painful for a small-business crusader like myself: Do we really need another negative consideration thrown at potential entrepreneurs considering going into business? It’s fucking depressing – at least to me…

But guess what? It turned out that I was not alone in my fears of the government’s infringing on our democracy. On March 1, 2024, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama held the entire CTA, and BOI requirements in particular, unconstitutional. To the fundamental question of whether the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate millions of entities and their stakeholders the moment they obtain their formal corporate status from the state, the Court has answered that not only there are no constitutional provisions supporting such excessive claims of power, but there are also no citable precedents or sufficient legal nexus.

For the time being, the Alabama Court’s decision protects from CTA’s enforcement only the specific plaintiffs who filed the claim. We can hope, however, that it will encourage other companies, individuals, civil rights lawyers, etc. in other states, to join the effort of protecting our corporate and individual privacy. Meanwhile, every entity incorporated before January 1, 2024 have to file before the deadline of January 1, 2025 and those incorporated during 2024 – within 90 days after the date of official creation by the state. Starting 2025, the reporting timeframe will be shortened to just 30 days.

Here comes the funny part, though: If you decide to bother yourself with episode 17 of the final (10th) season of The Blacklist, you will be able to see how utterly futile these government efforts are. The vast network the FBI special task force is trying to dismantle during that episode is engaged not only in establishing the fictitious corporate fronts to cover the diverse criminal enterprising, but also in creating flawless, unimpeachable false identities for the individuals – real or virtual – who qualify to be their “Beneficial Owners” under the CTA’s definitions.

I mean, it’s pretty clear to all of us, isn’t it? Those who want to stay hidden – will. Meanwhile, the rest of us will expose our identities to hell knows what kind of breaches and misuses. And if you think that that particular bit of The Blacklist fancy is as phantasmagorical as the rest of the show, we can agree to disagree: I thought it was the most realistic piece of plotting of the entire series. And I watched every single of the 218 episodes and liked quite a few of them too.                 

I Built This Prison: Teaser #5: Life Is a Meat Grinder


“The fact that I took it so personally day in and day out my whole life is a testimony of how severely self-absorbed I was. The prolonged nurturing of the scars caused by casual indignities was a very special pet in my menagerie of craziness. But even I would never claim that the pedestrian oppression of hierarchic systems was my exclusive prerogative.  

To be mistreated by those who outrank you (a boss or a critic) – this is just how life is.  If you try to make something of yourself in this harsh and merciless reality, no matter what it is, you must be ready to endure scores and scores of hardships.  You will have your self-esteem wrung, torn into pieces, thrown on the ground and stamped all over – hundreds of times. There is nothing new, special, or personal about it. You cannot be “out there” without experiencing a continuous inflow of sufferings.  The key is to be able to manage it without being traumatized and damaged. Which is quite a tall order.

  Generally speaking, as a species, we should’ve evolved to deal with all that shit.  How else are we surviving? There are a few rare individuals who, for better or worse, found ways of preserving themselves, of staying away from the garden-variety degradation of the spirit.  The rest of us, however, willingly and even strategically – with precision, rhythm and deliberation – stomp our feet straight into the meatgrinder.  And it fucking hurts.  Being chewed by the metal teeth of the machine (no matter what it may be – business, science, entertainment, arts, anything at all) is painful to everyone – lazy and hardworking, mediocre and geniuses, laid-back and ambitious.     

I’ve observed people and their involuntary reflexes in the workplace for thirty years – listening to their complaints, concerns, and rueful ramblings. It is my firm belief that even those who are pre-conditioned for the delusional complacency – perfectly tenderized and well-shaped for the feeder – are unable to remain indifferent to the hierarchic cruelty.”

“I Built This Prison”, Part I: Etiology of Crime, Chapter 4: Buckets of Tears… and Blood,  p. 51 – 52

I Built This PrisonExcerpt: Ozark‘s Wendy Byrde Negotiates Her Compensation


I Built This Prison,  Part I – Etiology of Crime, Chapter 3 – Delusions of Entitlement and Misconfusion of Rewards:

“In the episode 1.6 of Netflix’s original ‘Ozark’, desperate for money Wendy Byrde charges at her boss with an attempt of hostile earnings renegotiation (she is a pushy bird that Wendy Byrde, so it goes with the character). She notes that the sales are up 43% compare to the same month the previous year, while the only business change that took place was her hiring. Hence, she deserves a bonus that would correlate her compensation with her value(‼). Specifically, 50% of the income increase. They haggle and at the end the boss agrees to the bonus that together with Wendy’s salary amounts to one-third of the additional profits.

Fiction, of course. But, if the employers were actually inclined to evaluate and compensate their employees based on their tangible contribution into their businesses, the negotiations like that would be a common place. And maybe they are… somewhere. But I’ve never really witnessed anything like that. Well, something of the kind – once, fifteen years ago. But that was it.  

Of course, these are not exactly “negotiations” either. Wendy gives her boss an ultimatum because she has an upper hand – there is no comparable supply of labor in that God forsaken bumblefuck locale. There is like literally no one to do the same job – not on a half-ass, or quarter-ass, or even one-hundredth of an ass level. And so, her boss is not rewarding her for her contribution, he yields under the pressure of unfavorable market conditions.

An unimaginable situation for NYC (and I’m sure the same goes for all industrial centers), no matter what your field of expertise is! Here, an employer – even the one that is afraid out of his mind to lose you – deep inside knows that if you walk, he can find at least Somebody to fill the void. You, on the other hand, may drown in the competition searching for another place.”

                                                                                                                          p.40

Off the Cutting Room Floor of I Built This Prison: Clip #3: The Methodical Corruption of the Soul


“When Nietzsche wrote, ‘God is dead’, he wasn’t really talking about God’s existence per se. On the contrary, he was commenting on the state of human morality, or rather lack thereof, in the society greatly affected by the industrial revolution… And even that is not exactly right: it was more about the pervasive preoccupation with the accumulation of wealth… For many centuries before, whether correctly or not, philosophers and writers presumed the corruption by money to be the rich people’s affliction. I mean, you will not find any peasants in Dante’s Inferno. What Nietzsche alluded to was that by his time everyone, regardless of the status or the class, got onto the money-mining wagon and, as a result, removed themselves from God: even those attending services, kept doing it as a habitual ritual, not because of some true faith:

‘They no longer even know what religions are good for and merely register their presence in the world with a kind of dumb amazement. They feel abundantly committed, these good people, whether to their business or to their pleasures, not speak of the “fatherland” and their newspapers and “family obligations”: it seems that they simply have no time left for religion, the more so because it remains unclear to he whether it involves another business or another pleasure…’

                        Fredrich Nietzsche

                        Beyond Good and Evil, Part Three: What Is Religious

Well, we can argue that instead of formulating that snappy motto about God’s demise amidst all of the ‘civilized’ industriousness, he should’ve written: We, the humans, murdered God through the distraction of morality. But he said what he said. And it created a circular effect: his audience believed him – literally, and it liberated many into further relaxation of moral codes. Because we hear what we want to hear, disregarding the true meaning of the words.

And there lies the danger of catch phrases. They become popular beyond their intended audiences. Once out there, among the millions, all ideas described by memorable slogans get separated from their origins, adapted to the users’ whims and needs, reinterpreted, reshaped, modified to the point of becoming opposite of themselves. Sometimes it’s an act of the intentional distortion, but mostly it happens without any deliberation on the part of the unthinking revisionists.

I mean, I was born into a vile society that was built on blood, hate  and expropriation masked as ‘liberation’ causes by the slogans of supposed freedoms. It’s the reason why I ran away, idealistically hoping to be delivered onto more virtuous planes…”

                        Deleted from I Built This Prison, Chapter 5: Omni-Present and Omni-Powerful