On sharing and caring

Dear diary,

I can do it. Or if unable to do it, I can at least endure it. I can endure being trampled by the other runners.

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.
(I Corinthians 9:24)

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course...
(II Timothy 4:7)

That’s what Paul says, the last-place Apostle. (“I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” — I Corinthians 15:9)

I myself don’t like running in races. When I was younger, my parents compelled me to compete in track-&-field events, on behalf of our school. (I was also forced to join a Little League Baseball team; so I guess you could say that I had an abusive upbringing.) I was bad at everything except the long-distance races: the ones where it’s not about how fast you can dash, but, since the length seems never-ending, you have to pace yourself, thus having endurance really pays off. I’m good at chugging along & persevering. I’m inexhaustible, when it comes to drudgery. I can keep doing lowly tasks without recompense for interminable durations, like this stupid journal here. — Anyway, I got a whole bunch of first-place ribbons for winning the event where the competitors had to run like fourteen times around the whole entire track. I don’t remember how long the track was. So I can’t say whether that race was 500 meters, or 5,000 meters. Let’s say that it was fifty billion meters. I was unbeatable at that race; but I suckt at everything else.

I really hate competitive sports. Returning to the idea that I started with, taking racing as a metaphor for life, I can tell that I’ve fallen behind. Am I even competing anymore? Everyone’s lapping me. (By lapping, I mean that they are passing me on the track again & again, not that they are licking me with their tongues — I wish they were licking me with their tongues.) I keep telling myself “I can do this!”—the very words with which I began this entry—meaning that I can keep going and reach the finish. Yet, as I said, I end up slumping down onto the ground, halfway round, during the race’s midpoint, and all the other runners trample me. But the reason I collapsed in a heap is not due to exhaustion: for, as I said above, when it comes to tedious chores, I’m inexhaustible; and I never contradict myself. The truth is that I’ve simply grown bored with winning.

Don’t weep too hard for me tho, woeful shepherds (yet once more, I’m referencing Milton’s “Lycidas”: Weep no more, woful Shepherds weep no more, / For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead...); I mean, go ahead and shed a few choice tears for the photo op; but don’t sob yourself dry. I’m only whining about my condition to get you to send me charity: say, alms and a wheelchair; plus a personal assistant to push me to the finish line. Then hoist me up and let me sit on the shoulders of the guy who wins, during the end ceremonies, when he’s receiving his Olympic Gold Medal. I’ll conduct the orchestra while it plays his nation’s anthem.

Let me change the subject. This is gonna be one of those entries where I jump all over the map. I’m not inclined to concentrate on any one thot this morning...

Actually, no, I’ll continue talking about running races, cuz I just now remembered something that Andy Warhol said about the concept: I think it was in The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again, but I don’t have a copy of that book before me, so I’ll have to lazily paraphrase. He remarked: Isn’t it strange that people run races, and these records are set, but then the records are broken every year, because people are getting faster and faster — and then eventually there’s a record that can’t be beat: if you run the race in zero seconds flat; no one could beat that; so racing is an idea with a built-in ceiling. (It was something like that, that he said.)

So on the one hand we have competition, and on the other hand we have cooperation. Why is competition so beloved, and cooperation so berated? I prefer cooperation. Again, we have to ask ourselves, as human beings: What sets us apart from all the other animals? I say that it’s obvious the lions & tygers & bears & snakes & dragons & unicorns are better competitors than we homo sapiens. The one place where we (humans) have the distinct advantage on the rest of the animal kingdom is in our ability to cooperate, to share thots via the super-advanced lingual gift that Prometheus bequeathed us, and to work together to achieve pointless goals like landing on the moon.

But isn’t it funny: my argument in favor of embracing cooperation over competition is itself a competition! If I really believed in cooperation, then instead of saying to the animals: “OK, fuckos, so you’re stronger and faster and more evolved than us, but we possess neurosis!”—rather than taunt them thus, if I cared for cooperation, I would say instead:

Good evening, my dear brothers and sisters. Give ear now, for I wish to address you collectively, on behalf of the human species. Ye elks and moose, ducks and swans, eagles and parakeets, heed the words of my mouth. Thus saith humankind: We are proficient at writing poems, & your skill lies in the realm of transporting huge boulders. What say ye to the idea that we draw up a contract, and enter into a covenant together, signifying that we henceforth shall work together to accomplish all of our goals, and stop enslaving one another; stop systematically destroying one another with violence and bloodshed? Pooling our talents, nothing could stop us: We could build wonders, like giant anthills to serve as tombs, if we only harmonize instead of bickering about who gets to press the buttons on the remote that controls the weather; and who shall be called a “pet” and who shall be considered “wild”. For as our great prophet said, in his “Song of Myself” (52), which is sort of like the bible for us humans:

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

*

I placed an asterisk there, to signify that I am done with my speech. I didn’t really know how to end it, so I just had to break off abruptly after the quote. It’s hard to tell what one’s audience is thinking, especially when they’re animals who disdain speaking English. You try to read their facial expressions, but they’re so inscrutable that they all might as well be wearing masks.

If I actually were to address them as above, however, I wonder how each type of creature would react.

I bet the hummingbirds would really like my plan, cuz they’re tired of getting chased by the bigger predators such as mountain lions. The doctrine of cooperation appeals to the gentle & vulnerable. So the little sparrows and other small critters like voles and chihuahuas would be eager to add their signatures to this pan-bestial contract, as they perceive that it would spare them from constantly having to dodge butterfly nets. But the malevolentest in the kingdom, the Tyrant Sauroid and his cronies, plus all the sloths in the pharmaceutical sector, and the chimps on Wall Street, would have to be cajoled with lavish bribes before signing.

But aren’t I on to something? Consider an hypothetical situation: Let’s say that my neighbor and I are both desiring to build a house — each our own house, respectively. Let’s see how our options appear thru these distinct lenses: cooperation versus competition. Wouldn’t it be a better idea for me to help my neighbor build his house, and then we both come over and build my house [= cooperation]; rather than for us both to work only our our own house individually, and then each night sneak into our opposite yards and sabotage each other’s progress [= competition]? Yet this latter way is how our globe’s nations treat each other, it seems to me... & I can be trusted to evaluate our earthly situation, as I am the human ambassador to the animal kingdom. (I’ve delivered sermons to packs of jackals; I think I can handle a few nuclear-armed religious fanatics.)

Obviously I’m stretching the truth. I can’t speak the language of ALL living creatures. I only am fluent in dolphin, whale, squid, bunny, cat, crow, & deer. And sometimes dog, which is a subdialect of bear. But representatives from each of these species can pass the word on to the others; so I think we still have a chance to make this thing work. We stayed up all night at the office, eking out the fine print of the deal; I don’t wanna just give up, throw it out and start all over. I hired thirty-three secretaries to take shorthand notes! (I talk pretty fast.) This is before the days of computers. This is before even the plague of the printing press. We don’t really even possess a proper alphabet; we must use pictograms to broad-brush the gist of our dreams. And our infant mortality rate is thru the roof. But that gives us an excuse to enjoy more sensual parlor games.

Lastly, I just gotta ask: What’s up with this culture? I mean our own culture: the one that we suffer from here in our homeland — I just don’t get it. I heard a couple of customers at the coffee shop talking about a recent political rally: apparently a woman from the audience asked the candidate a question, and she, the inquisitor, prefaced her speech by saying that she works three jobs and “still can’t make ends meet”. The patron who had relayed this then said to her companion: “Can you believe that?” Then her coffee-mate sipped and said, “That is so admirable: she is such a hard worker! I wish my son Bryan were like that; but he’s a surrealist, so he’s against work: he just goofs off all day.”

So what I, the eavesdropper lurking in the shadows nearby, was able to conclude from this is that the culture here on Planet USA values work, specifically overwork. The harder you sweat and grunt and stress about “earning your keep”, the more moral you are.

But then the conversation of these same two customers at the coffee shop meandered to the topic of entrepreneurs. The woman who said above “That’s so admirable: she’s such a hard worker!” about the woman who slaves at three jobs, brought up the name of a friend of hers (so she claimed) whom she called a “successful entrepreneur,” and she then proceeded sincerely to praise this friend for a reason antithetical to the one that moved her to praise the aforesaid wage-slave: she said, “So-and-so’s business is so well run: she’s so good at what she does — the proof is that she only works 4 hours per week!”

Now, overhearing this last remark confused me; for I had recently gleaned, from the very same source, that incessant work is righteous & makes you an upstanding citizen; yet the polar opposite is also the case, apparently: the less work that you do, the more respected you are.

I guess the sentimental notion of a hardworking laborer pleases the mind of some coffee-shop customers as much as the prospect of a life of wealthy leisure gained by way of technological innovation.

So my closing wish is that we would share the fruits of humankind’s progress not only with each other but with all the other animals.