Part 5/14:
The speaker turns to modern societal trends—hyphenated names, expensive phone plans, and the obsession with motivation. He criticizes hyphenated names as pretentious, describing them as attempts to enhance personal dignity via superficial means. The focus then shifts to the obsession with tiny savings on phone calls, which he sees as futile rather than a genuine concern.
He questions the motivation industry—books, tapes, seminars—arguing that human motivation is simple: either you want to do something or not. If you’re motivated enough to buy a motivational book, you should be motivated enough to act without it. Intentional nostalgia for 1-hour photo processing also strikes him as bizarre, a relic he dismisses as unnecessary in the age of instant gratification.