O god not another picture of food stolen from the junk ads.
Dear diary,
What should we liken humankind to this morning? How about a chariot racing towards a cliff. And who shall we say is in the chariot — just our local neighborhood? or should it be Europe and Asia and certain other places too?
I say we should stick with saying what we already said, up above at the starting line: that our doomed chariot contains ALL HUMANS.
Roger that. (That means “Message received” — I’m saying that I agree with the point that you just made thru me.)
So it’s like the earth itself is in the chariot; we could think of a painted globe riding on the seat, and the reins have fallen to the floor, so the horses are just dashing wherever they please, because a planet doesn’t have any arms or hands to hold the straps that could steer the horses away from the cliffside. And the horses represent the human emotions, the human will, all the Freudian drives or whatever.
But if there are people in a chariot, and the chariot is bolting toward a cliff, the fear is that the chariot will careen over the edge and plummet to the ground below, which is a drop of more than ten thousand parasangs; thus the horses will die, and the people who were being conveyed will all die as well, in a bloody heap. They hit the ground and you see an explosion. There’s a fire followed by a mushroom cloud.
OK, but here’s my point: this picture that you just painted only makes sense if there are normal human passengers, or at least mammals in the front seat, or a dolphin or two — anything that has the breath of life within it, and preferably a body, so that we can relate to its demise. Cuz if you just put a globe in the seat, and let the chariot drop off the cliffside, what happens is that the horses die, but the globe just rolls out the side of the carriage during the descent and bounces on the ground like a rubber ball. Globes don’t die — only the things that live on them die. So I think your motion to substitute the whole planet Earth for humankind was a stupid idea. You should have eliminated the chariot and its horses, too: then it would make more sense.
But think about how ridiculous it would be to shout to the people at the shopping mall “Beware, humankind is like unto a globe that is hastening thru outer space at breakneck speed!” That does not have the same ring as “Beware, we humans are on a chariot being pulled by wild horses toward the cliff of Gehenna!” The latter warning is more urgent: it has the effect of causing the shoppers to stop and think a moment before making their next hot purchase. They are most likely all doing their Christmas shopping; that’s why they’re at the mall on a Monday night — normally they’d be at home watching U.S. football.
So the notion of a planet spinning thru space doesn’t strike a single shopper as alarming. Most of the shoppers don’t even look up for more than a moment, after you bellow your prophecy — they just return to shuffling thru their stack of receipts and coupons. They think to themselves “Well, isn’t a planet like Earth supposed to spin like a top until it wobbles and falls over? And isn’t it preferable to be hurtling thru the outer darkness of space, because then when your globe does finally slow down and lean to one side, it comes to rest on a big black blanket, instead of a hard floor like the Valley of Gehenna, which is always on fire.” And I agree with these shoppers. I think they deserve to “save big” on their next purchase.
II
Yet everyone’s up to their eyeballs in debt; that’s why we all have to clip coupons and worry about saving “bigtime” on our Christmas shopping. Did you hear the new statistics? 99% of United Statesians are drowning in debt. Not just swimming: drowning. And then you have other countries like Mexico, which is just down the street from the U.S.A.; also countries like Greece, which are notoriously late on their payments; and Italy, Belgium, Spain, Singapore, Japan… it’s 5:50 a.m. right now, and I could go on until at least 6:00 listing countries that are in debt. The point I’m making is this:
There are human individuals, and then there are groups of humans who are bound by borderlines. Both the individuals AND the groups are positively BURIED IN DEBT. Among groups, the U.S. is near the top of the list of debtor nations. There are also other countries beyond the United States which belong to this great phantasm named “America”; and, if all these countries were to merge so that there were no longer North America and Central America and South America but just ONE SINGLE INTEGRATED NEW AMERICA, then it would have no problem achieving the top slot on the debt list. America would then be #1, undoubtedly. But why does this matter? Well, first, winning is always a good thing. But even more important is the idea that where there’s a debtor, there’s sure to be a creditor. The one cannot survive without the other: they’re like particles and antiparticles; or like Shelley meeting his double at the Villa Magni. They enter existence together, as if it were a dinner party; then leave together, always too early or late. Therefore if the vast majority of individuals who live in this world, along with more than 99% of their nations, are being tormented on a cross of debt this very instant, then that means that there are less than 1% of the world’s people and countries administering the crucifixions. More power to them.
I like Athens. Not necessarily any of the places that are named Athens at present, such as the one in New York — no offence to that town, but I’m in love with the ancient Athens, which is currently out-of-print. Now I’m told that Athens is the capital of Greece. Apparently there’s a modern version of ancient Athens, and a modern version of ancient Greece — these also differ from my beloved because they’re distant in time, just like New York’s Athens is distant in space. But let’s say that I’m so sentimental about names that I actually learn to care about the people of modern Greece, just because I formerly cared about the souls of ancient Greece. OK, so now I hear that Greece is in debt: during the time that I find myself (alas) alive, Greece is suffering a debt crisis on the level of the U.S.’s famous Great Depression. Now take this knowledge and add it to the stuff that we were talking about directly above: all those people and nations that are debtors. We got unthinkable misery here: We got the bulk of people and countries suffering in this fashion: Life is being suffocated by MASS DEBT. So here’s my solution:
Cancel the debt. (It’s that simple; let the chips fall where they may.)
But some heckler inevitably shouts: “You can’t cancel the debt; that’s unfair to the creditor. You can’t save the debtors at the expense of the creditors!”
But I say: Why not? If 99% of all people and countries are living in misery because of their debts, then just cancel all the debt and get back to living harmoniously. For what will the 1% do, who wake up tomorrow and see that all the payments for fees and penalties that they were expecting to receive have been officially nullified? They will then cry and cry. They will weep for many days — they will feel like they got only 2nd place in a beauty pageant, or as if an item that they planned to purchase at the mall was so popular that it sold out and is currently unavailable.
But the 1% are incapable of feeling distress. They already live in a beautiful mansion, and they have butlers and maids. So if they discover that we’ve canceled our financial relationship with them, and that we’re not going to continue to send them payments on the interest of the debts that we were told we owed to them, they won’t even be able to cry real tears: they’ll have to go do research on the Internet and watch an online video from the Do-It-Yourself Network called “How to weep”. They’ll need to practice intensely, using squirt bottles of saline solution in lieu of teardrops, until they begin to get the hang of the technique. Then they can take their act on the road; embark on a world tour of all the entertainment clubs, advertising their routine like so: “You won’t believe your eyes: this former bigshot creditor WEEPS onstage! Live topless shows nightly.” Thus they’ll recoup their imaginary loss.
For, like I explained, there won’t even be any loss; cuz the people who are on the lender side of this contract already possess so much wealth that they can’t even view it all at once — the mountain of ingots expands beyond their peripheral vision: They must enter into a helicopter and ascend past the upper atmosphere of this planet, to behold the sum of their earthly treasure; which, from outer space, looks like the red dot on Jupiter: except this one is gold of course.
Actually it should be the inverse of that ratio: as if all the rest of the planet were red, and the place where the “dot” resides now became Jupiter-colored; then swap Jupiter with Earth and red with gold. — However, I’m dissatisfied with this more accurate depiction, because it puts our poor creditor, once again, in the position of not being able to enjoy the sight of his treasure in one quick glance, cuz a sphere is round, thus it has many sides, and nobody’s ever figured out how to ogle a moon’s dark side while simultaneously espying its…
III
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
Emily Dickinson should haunt us, as we tumble thru space in our wagon. Anyone who respects the lender is against Possibility. And the way that any lender can escape his imprisoning Prose is to say “Take these riches: I didn’t originate them anyway: I’m but the fragment of spacetime they passed thru.”
For whoever will save himself shall lose herself;
but whoever shall lose himself shall save herself.—Jesus (Mark 8:35)
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