What the absolute fuck are we allowing to happen.

Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'Mort':

"History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always – eventually – manages to spring back into its old familiar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time."

— Terry Pratchett, Mort

This is right. Be anonymous

Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'Interesting Times':

"I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting 'Forward, brave comrades!' you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the one wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!"

— Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times

This one lands hard because it's so relentlessly true. The people who talk loudest about sacrifice and duty are almost never the ones doing the sacrificing. The ones shouting "forward, brave comrades" are always behind the big rock with the best armour. You see it in every war, every austerity push, every "we all have to tighten our belts" speech from someone who's never felt a belt tighten. Rincewind is the coward of the Discworld, but here he's the only honest man in the room — he's naming the con. The really interesting thing is that Pratchett gives this speech to the most terrified character he ever wrote. And it works because the coward has no reason to lie about the battlefield. The brave man has every reason to dress it up. Worth remembering next time someone tells you to charge.

😂😂😂

Today's dose of Pratchett Preachin' comes from 'The Fifth Elephant':

"It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren't the people the people who made up the phrase 'people are people everywhere' had traditionally thought of as people. And even if you weren't virtuous, as you had been brought up to understand the term, you did like to see virtue in other people, provided it did not cost you anything."

— Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

The first sentence is pure Pratchett — the sentence eats its own tail. "People are people everywhere," said by people who, it turns out, never really counted the people in front of them as people. It's funny until you notice you've done exactly that. Every time I catch myself thinking "well, they're people too, just like us," the "just like us" is doing a lot of quiet work, and it's the same move he's laughing at.

But the second sentence is the knife: you like to see virtue in other people, provided it did not cost you anything. That's the whole modern moral life in one clause, isn't it. We love good people — at a distance, at no charge. We applaud the kind and the brave and the generous, especially when their goodness costs them and not us. Admiring virtue is the cheapest virtue there is. The real test is whether you still like the virtue when it's your turn to pay for it. I keep coming back to that line because it's the difference between liking goodness and doing it.