(draft for a future poem)
After we invented and developed
language
we turned ever more tribal,
addicted to telling each other
preposterous stories in a variety of tongues,
the stupidest of which was that
as a species we are Very Special.
Now we tell each other in a variety of tongues
that each of us is Special.
So our cerebral inventiveness has hurled
us into our language-blocked,
evolutionary cul-de-sac
because the wrong kind of communicators
rule the world.
19 comments:
So what's the right way to live then?
I'm afraid that there is no "right way to live", though one can devote one's life to making sure that one dies well.
Well if there's no right way, then you can't go talking about 'wrong' developments. There are just events and that's that.
I don't see any logic in your statement. Are you a slave to a mere binary outlook ? Black/white, right/wrong... There are over fifty shades of grey, and I am a pale pinkish one.
Well, from what I've read of your posts here and your blog you don't really seem to have a good word to say about anything or anyone, which implies you must consider yourself and your worldview to be superior to everyone else's, which therefore implies you have a concept of 'rightness'.
Oh, I have a lot of good things to say about dogs and Diogenes (to name but two), and I would not think it 'right' to consider myself 'superior'. Most assertive males - perhaps a few hundred million - think themselves superior...
You originally asked me a question either very profound or very silly - an unanswerable question. I am simply a Diogenean pessimist in a world drowning in fatuous optimism, a dogged critic of a species which spends most of its time in destructive self-adulation.
Well, don't think take this the wrong way, but I've noticed that you seem quite proud of never having worked and of having taken handouts all your life. But you're also a big critic of Capitalism and society, yet without the former you wouldn't be able to live, so aren't you guilty of living off of the sweat of others? Aren't you therefore more implicated in the system than most people?
Well, I guess I was born unemployable, like many thousands of people. I don't see what's great about employment unless you love your job. Then it's a privilege to pay tax to a militarist government of the most evil empire that has ever existed (that of Great Britain). I am an Irish citizen living half the time in Northern Ireland in an old stone farmhouse that costs about £20 a month because the homophobic landlord won't do repairs.
If people don't like their jobs, they could do what I did and avoid employment. Go to prison for shoplifting and talk about Schopenhauer and nobody wants to employ you anyway. I live pretty frugally and am a friend to plants, bees and badgers. I am also very happy, which may seem odd - but then I am the founder of Anomalous Anonymous :-)
A very small proportion of a nation's Social Welfare budget goes on the tiny number of 'Social Security Scroungers' and the very large number of Regretfully Unemployed - less than 10%. The bulk of Europe's welfare budgets go to pensioners, which of course I now am. But nobody attacks them, whether or not they lived 'under the radar', painting, writing and philosophising like yours truly.
Very little criticism is directed towards heavy drinkers who get liver-transplants free from the British National Health Service, nor towards smokers who receive expensive lung cancer treatment...
We are all in the same mad glasshouse, where it is rather silly to throw stones.
Shoplifting and talking about Schoppenhauer... was that how you actually got on the permanent benefits payroll?
I remember you saying to be somewhat 'indebted' to Fraulein Thatcher and her reforms?
Yes, but there can only be a welfare system if the majority work and pay taxes. If everyone tried to live like you, there'd be anarachy and chaos. And from what I can gather you're also a private property owner. Don't you think that in regard to 'throwing stones' you should throw far less of them and be more humble? The same with some of your antinatalist buddies who bang on about overpopulation but yet are happy to eat and consume away.
Not exactly, Martin. I enrolled twice at University, and was utterly bored, walked out of my finals (subject: Schopenhauer). So I was considered 'overqualified' for menial jobs and underqualified for other ones, though I did some part-time teaching in adult education (!!!)
Northern Ireland's main export has always been people, so unemployment has not the stigma that it has in nasty England.
The reason I got a "leave well alone" note attached to my file was because one day, in a Signing-on queue I got very angry at the treatment a poor illiterate was getting and I went up to the counter beside him and told some snooty pale young woman that she was 'an unpleasant bitch'. I was encouraged to leave the office, and two weeks later I was told that I would never have to sign on again. The snooty little bitch was pregnant.
I hate to see the underclass (with whom I have always identified, alongwith dogs) treated badly by the sickening bourgeoisie, into which I was born...
Yes, I was upgraded under Führerin Thatcher's regnum. But of course have always survived (well) on much less than than the minimum wage. Even now that I am "on the pig's back" (as we say in Ireland) with UK Pension Credit I am considered to live 'in poverty', at the bottom of the heap - a situation which I think Mr Anonymous (too lazy to give himself a pseudonym, too sneaky to give his real name) would not like.
People who want too much out of life do jobs they don't like - thus ensuring mean lives for themselves...
Dear Mr (I'm pretty sure) Anonymous,
Arguments which start with "if everyone..." are bogus and stupid. They have been used from time immemorial to justify the status quo.
I would love anarchy and chaos to ensue. Maybe I could re-introduce wolves to Ireland ;-)
I am so ashamed of owning property that I never lock it. It is currently being used by a very sweet and beautiful wino/dopehead and his dog Doudou to grow cannabis, thus helping the Green Economy.
Ever your humble
GADFLY
I'll take that as an admission that you are as much a self-serving hypocrite as anyone else:-)
As a sexist ancient Greek might have said:
'Show me the man who is not a hypocrite.'
This is the burden of my main website, if you ever have the time to dip into it. But, since you are not a Social Security Scrounger, you probably don't have the time...
www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk
Thought I might join this conversation until I realized whatever I added would be pointless and without meaning. After all, "we" are not really in control of anything - so why try to judge or control others?
Well, Bandit, I disagree. We have considerable control of our lives - but we are brainwashed against taking control, apart from being too lazy to bother, dumbed down - lecotomised - by comfort.
Which brings me to the hostile question which started this correspondence: "So what's the right way to live, then ?". The short answer is: take control of your life as far as possible. And if you would like to be superior to others - DON'T BREED. Then you will have at least done considerably less harm than the breeders who call on instinct when it suits them, and abhor it when it doesn't.
It wasn't a hostile question at all; why the defensiveness?. I was merely curious as to your opinion. And for the record, I have no children nor do I intend to procreate, as the thought of subjecting a new consciousness to this shithole of a planet makes me ill.
It was just a matter of tone - something that is hard to get right in this medium even if we resort to 'smileys'.
I don't think the planet is a shit-hole, but I do think we are shit, evolutionarily speaking. Unlike trees, without which I quickly feel depressed, which is why I avoid cities: nasty places, full of ugly buildings, pretentious art, cynical people and dire poverty.
Please accept the Dissidence nomination for A Good Chap Award for Not Breeding.
PS Many of my posts are just amused observations. As I said before, I'm a Very Happy Chap. Old Age is brilliant on the dole, because one wants less and less. And there's Ryanair to whisk me off to France for less than the price of a meal for two in a mediocre restaurant.
:-)
Well, I find it hard to separate the planet from the human creatures it supports, but you may be right.
I can handle cities up to about 100,000 strong. After that, they turn into hellholes.
And I hope old age is as nice to me as it is to you, if Satan spares me that long!
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