Monday, December 12, 2005

From Tom Bissell's story "Death Defier"

There really were, Donk had often thought, and thought again now, two kinds of people in the world: Chaos People and Order People...It was not meant in a condescending way. No judgement; it was purely an empirical matter. Chaos People, Order People. Anyone who doubted this had never tried to wait in line, board a plane, or get off a bus among Chaos People. The next necessary division of the world's people took place along the lines of whether they actually knew what they were. The Japanese were Order People and knew it. Americans and English were Chaos People who thought they were Order People. The French were the worst thing to be: Order People who thought they were Chaos People. But Afghans, like Africans and Russians and the Irish, were Chaos People who knew they were Chaos People, and while this lent the people themselves a good amount of charm, it made their countries berserk, insane. Countries did indeed go insane. Sometimes they went insane and stayed insane. Chaos People's countries particularly tended to stay insane.

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