George Carlin: Life Is Worth Losing (2005)
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Here's another one of our
spiritually uplifting activities.
We don't do this one much anymore,
but it use to be really big.
Human sacrifice.
I miss that.
The Aztecs loved human sacrifice
and they were good at it.
Well, they got a lot of practice.
For instance, right around the year 1500,
the Aztecs sacrificed 80,000 people
in one ceremony.

Okay?
80,000 people in one ceremony.
You know what the occasion was?
They were opening a new temple.
Nothing like religion
for a little entertainment, huh?
Especially that old time religion.
You know how the Aztecs went about their sacrificing?
Here's how they did it.
They would do it right out in public.

Right in front of everybody.
Big town.
Beautiful city square.
20, 30,000 people looking on.
They would take the guy,
lay him on an alter,
cut his chest open,
pull his heart out,
hold it up in the air while it was still beating.
Got that?

Cut his chest open,
pull his heart out and hold it up in the air
while it was still beating.
You know what you call that?
Theater.
That is fucking theater.
And although the procedure
may have been a little too crude
to be considered the first bypass surgery,
it could easily be seen as

an early form of organ donor program.
The Aztecs, human beings just like us.
Not too long ago, 500 years.
Columbus had already landed.
This is just south of here.
Mexico.
And by the way,
those hearts didn't go to waste.
Did not go to waste.
Because right after the ceremonies,

the royal family, naturally,
would enjoy another one of our amusing activities,
cannibalism.
Imagine that.
Chowing down on another human being.
You got to be all out of beef jerky, man.
You got to be really fucking hungry.
But it happens, doesn't it?
It still happens to this day.
A bunch of people stranded in the wilderness,
run out of Pop-Tarts,
you got to eat something.
Might as well be Steve.
And how do you decide who to eat first?
How do you decide who's first on the barbecue rack?
Do you pick on the little guy
because he's skinny and he can't fight back?
Or do you all gang up on the body builder
because he's got a lot of steaks and chops on him?
These are things human beings have to consider.

One more of these charming diversions of ours,
necrophilia.
Now there's a hobby for you.
Fucking a corpse.
It takes a special kind of guy.
Don't you think?
But it happens, it happens.
More than you might think.
It happens among humans.
Animals don't do that.
Animals don't fuck their dead.
A rat will do a lot of gross things,
but he will not fuck a dead rat.
It wouldn't even occur to him.
Only a human being would think
to fuck someone who just died.
We got to be the most interesting critters
on the planet.
And then we wonder why a UFO
doesn't just land and say, hello.

You know the best thing about necrophilia?
You don't have to bring flowers.
Yeah, usually they're already there.
Isn't that nice?
It's nice.
It's convenient.
Human beings will do anything.
Anything.
I am convinced.
That's why when all those beheadings started in Iraq,

it didn't bother me.
I took it right in stride.
A lot of people here were horrified.
"Oh, beheadings, beheadings."
What are you fucking surprised?
It's just one more form of extreme human behavior.
Besides, who cares about some
mercenary civilian contractor from Oklahoma
who gets his head cut off?
Fuck him.

Fuck him.
Hey, Jack, you don't want to get your head cut off?
Stay the fuck in Oklahoma.
Stay the fuck in Oklahoma.
They ain't cutting off heads in Oklahoma.
As far as I know.
But I do know this,
you strap on a gun
and go strutting around some other man's country,
you better be ready for some action, Jack.

You better be ready for some action.
People are touchy about that sort of thing.
And let me ask you this
while I have you good, clean Americans here.
This is a moral question, not rhetorical.
I'm looking for the answer.
What is the moral difference
between cutting off one guy's head
or two or three or five or ten
and dropping a big bomb on a hospital

and killing a whole bunch of sick kids?
Has anybody in authority
given you an explanation of the difference?
I have not gotten an email on this.
No one will talk to me.
I haven't gotten a postcard,
not a fucking instant message, nothin'.
Now, in case you're wondering
why I have a certain interest and fascination,
let's call it,

with torture and beheadings
and all of these things I've mentioned
is because each of these items
reminds me in life,
every time one of them occurs,
it reminds me over and over again
what beasts we human beings really are, you know?
When you get right down to it,
when you get right down to it,
human beings are nothing more

than ordinary jungle beasts.
Savages.
No different from the Cro-Magnon people
who lived 25,000 years ago
in the Plasticine Forest
eating grubs off of rotten logs.
No different.
Our DNA hasn't changed substantially
in 100,000 years.
We're still operating out of the lower brain.

The reptilian brain.
Fight or flight.
Kill or be killed.
Now, we like to think we've evolved and advanced
because we can build a computer,
fly an airplane,
travel underwater.
We can write a sonnet,
paint a painting,
compose an opera.

But you know something?
We're barely out of the jungle on this planet.
Barely out of the fucking jungle.
What we are is semi-civilized beasts
with baseball caps and automatic weapons.
And this civilization of ours
that we're so proud of,
this civilization with its so-called civilized behavior,
you ever stop and realize
how fragile all this is?
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How fragile the whole structure,
how easily it can all just break right down,
just break right down.
It wouldn't take much.
It'll probably happen in less than two years.
It wouldn't take much
to throw us right back into barbaric times.
All you'd have to do
would be eliminate electricity.
That's all.
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But completely.
Eliminate electricity.
So, no electricity, no lights.
You're back to candles and lanterns.
Campfires and bonfires.
Batteries couldn't be recharged.
Generators couldn't be refueled
because fuel is pumped electrically.
So is water, by the way.
So no lights, no fuel, no water, no computers.

And computers run everything.
And among the many things computers run
that operate on electricity
are all of the security systems
in all of our jails
and prisons and nut houses.
So suddenly without electricity,
all across America
the gates and cell doors
of penitentiaries

and mental institutions
would fly open
and out would come all of our old friends.
The ones who've been away,
at camp.
Serial killers,
mass murderers,
felony rapists,
armed robbers,
car jackers,

home invaders,
thieves,
burglars, kidnappers,
sadists, pedophiles,
sexual predators, pimps,
pushers, pornographers,
speed freaks, crack heads, sick junkies.
All the ethnic street gangs.
Blacks, Spanish and Asian gangs,
Japanese Yakuza,
Russian Mafia,
Neo-Nazis,
white supremacists,
Sicilian hit man,
Italian mobsters,
Jamaican and Colombian drug gangs.
And those are just the ones we caught.
Lets not forget their counter-parts
still on the outside right now
waiting to hook up with their prison buddies
so they can start a new organization,
The American Federation of Sociopaths.
Just what the country needs.
Another special interest group.
Eight to ten million of them there would be.
Counting all the parolees
and all the probationers
and the ones who've never been caught.
Eight to ten million
bitter, angry, violent,
sexually hyperactive alpha males
with nothing to do.
No hobbies.
No medication.
No scruples.
Just a bunch of bad guys
looking for a good time.
Maybe dropping by your house.
"Hi.
Hope we're not intruding.
Got any beer?
Oh, good.
Well, I got about 1400 really thirsty guys here.
How about women?
Got any women?
Oh, just your wife, huh?
Well, I think we can make that work.
Now boys, there's a lady here.
So I want you to mind your manners
and wait your turn."

Police wouldn't help you.
They'd be gone at the first sign of trouble.
They'd be home protecting their own families.
So would the Army and the National Guard.
You'd be alone.
You'd be on your own.
You'd be S.O.L. And J.W.F.
Shit out of luck and jolly well fucked.
Shit out of luck and jolly well fucked.
After a couple of years of living like that,
beheadings would be the least of your problems.
People would be lining up to be beheaded.
So let's get back to suicide,
which now seems like a reasonable alternative.

Suicide is an interesting topic to me
because it is an inherently interesting decision.
To decide voluntarily not to exist anymore.
It's profound.
You know what it is?
It's the ultimate makeover.

That's why I think it belongs on television.
In this depraved culture we live in,
with all of these reality shows.
Suicide and television will be a natural.
I'll bet you I can have
an All-Suicide Channel on cable TV.
I'll bet you.
Shit, they got all golf.
What the fuck, huh?
Goddamn.

You ever watch golf?
You ever watch golf?
It's like watching flies fuck.
If you'd get a bunch of brainless assholes
insisting on waste a Sunday afternoon
on that kind of shit,
you know you can get some people to watch some suicides.
All day long,
24 hours a day
nothing but suicides.

Must die TV.
You'd get a lot of people watching that shit.
You'd get a lot of people
volunteering to be on there, too.
Just so their friends can see them on TV.
People are fucking goofy.
You'd get a lot of volunteers.
You'd get all them leftover assholes
from "Let's Make a Deal".
They'd be lined up around the block

pushing each other out of the way,
putting on funny capes and caps and hats
and makeup and calling themselves Captain Suicide.
Guys would be competing for most unusual method.
People would be jumping off of silos,
lighting themselves on fire,
putting rat poison on a taco,
drinking Mop & Glo,
sticking moth balls up their ass.
You'd probably have some weird fuck show up

who'd figured out how to kill himself
with dental floss and a stinger missile.
People are fucking goofy.
I'd bet you could find you a married couple,
in this country, shit.
I'll bet you,
you could find a married couple
in one of them trailer parks or something
who'd be perfectly willing
to sit in a loveseat

and blow each other's heads off with shotguns
while a love song is playing.
People are fucking nuts.
This country is full of nitwits and assholes.
Do you ever notice that?
Oh, my goodness, yes.
Oh, my goodness.
Yeah.
Nitwits, assholes,
fuck ups, scumbags,

jerk offs and dipshits.
And they all vote.
They all vote, yeah.
In fact, sometimes you get the impression
They're the only ones who vote.
You can usually tell who's been doing the voting
by looking at the fucking election returns.
Man, it sure ain't me out there
wasting my time
with a meaningless activity like that.

You know those people on the "Jerry Springer Show",
those are the average Americans.
Oh, yeah, believe me.
Below average can't get on the show.
Can't get on.
Below average is sitting home
watching that shit on TV,
getting ready to out and vote,
filling out their sample ballot.
People are fucking dumb.

You can say what you want about this country,
and I love this place.
I love the freedoms we used to have.
I love it.
I love that.
I love it when it didn't take a fucking catastrophe
to get us to care for one another.
I love the fact
that we're on camera all the time
from all angles.

But, you know, you can say what you want about America.
And I say I love this place.
I wouldn't have it any other way,
wouldn't live in any other time in history
in any other place.
But say what you want about America.
Land of the free, home of the brave.
We've got some dumb-ass motherfuckers
floating around this country.
Dumb-ass motherfuckers, you know.

Now, obviously that doesn't include this audience.
I understand that.
You seem intelligent and perceptive
but the rest of them,
holy jumping fucking shit balls.
Dumber than a second coat of paint.
Now, this ain't just ranting and raving.
This ain't just blowing off steam.
I got a little evidence to support my claim.
It just seems to me

seems to me,
that only a really low IQ population
could have taken this beautiful continent,
this magnificent American landscape
that we inherited...
Well, actually, we stole it
from the Mexicans and the ...