For in the years to come you will find yourselves up against gods of all sorts, big and little gods, corporate and incorporeal gods, all of them demanding to be worshiped and obeyed – the myriad deities of money and power, of convention and custom, that will seek to limit and control your thoughts and lives. Defy them; that’s my advice to you. Thumb your noses. For, as the myths tell us, it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed their humanity.
–Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002
Title is first line of Allen Ginsberg’s poem, “Cosmopolitan Greetings”
