Bozos On This Bus Quotes

we're all bozos on the bus, so might as well sit back and enjoy the ride.

I think we're all bozos on this bus.

Well, imagine you are alone in a room. The lights are down low, you’ve got some scented candles going. Soothing New Age tunes, nothing too druid-chanty, seep out of the hi-fi to gently massage your cerebral cortex. Feel good? Are you the best, most special person in the room right now? Yes. That’s the gift of being alone. Then a bozo in a CAT Diesel Power cap barges in. What’s the chance that you are the best, most special person in the room now? Fifty-fifty. If you both were dealt two cards, those would be your odds of holding the winning hand. Now imagine ten people are in the room. It’s cramped. You’re elbow to elbow, aerosolized dandruff floats in the air, and the candle’s lavender scent is complicated by BO tones, with a tuna sandwich finish. What are the chances you’re the best, most special person in the room? If you were handed cards, you might expect to be crowned one time out of ten. People, as ever, are the problem. The more people there are, the tougher you have it. Just by sitting next to you, they fuck you up, as if life were nothing more than a bus ride to hell (which it is). But what if you moved to another seat? Changed position? Your seat is everything. It can give you room to relax, to contemplate your next move. Or it might instigate your unraveling.

We’re all bozos on the bus, so we might as well sit back and enjoy the ride. —WAVY GRAVY

It was time to use the audio medium to look into the future once again, and the opportunity was taken by The Firesign Theatre to transport its fans to The Future Fair, which introduced a new generation to the fast-arriving Digital Age. “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus” (1971) took its listeners into the Hard Disk of Darkness,

Modern life is becoming more and more like that bus hurtling down the highway: speedy, turbulent, stimulus saturated, and mobile. As a result, we are all becoming less and less able to think hard and well about what best to do in many situations. Hence, even the most careful-minded of us are increasingly likely to react automatically to the cues for action that exist in those settings. So, given the quickening pace and concentration-disrupting character of today’s world, are we all fated to be bozos on this bus? Not if, rather than raging against the invading automaticity, we invite it in but take systematic control of the way it operates on us.

In enlightenment, there is no separation between “me” and “you.” So in enlightenment, there is no impulse to say that “I” no longer identify as “me,” but “you” still do identify as “you,” or that all desire and fear have completely vanished “for me,” but “you” are still stuck with them, or that “I” am like Ramana Maharshi and “you” are just another bozo on the bus. In enlightenment, it all happens Here / Now and none of it is personal.