The world is not falling apart; it’s just remaining the same as it always was — a brutal place. The sad realization is that humankind is not sublimating the world to a better, more harmonious state, as it could; no, instead, humans are reveling in the brutality, like unsupervised children.
Who wants the truth tho? — that’s gloomy. Let’s do something fun…
Immediately we encounter another problem, however; for no two people can agree about what “a wonderful night out on the town” consists of: One man likes hamburgers, thus going out to buy and eat a hamburger is his definition of a good time; whereas another man prefers hotdogs exclusively, so visiting a hotdog vendor is his idea of a perfect evening. I myself enjoy hamburgers AND hotdogs, but I am the only living human who feels this way.
I even accept the presence of cheeseburgers, which are just like hamburgers, except they have a slice of orange Americana draped over their patty.
Yes, everything’s good. Everything’s working out for the best. Things may seem chaotic and discordant, but if you just patiently wait until all the bad times pass…
Guns are another issue where I love both sides of the argument. I love the people who want to take everyone’s firearms away; and I love the people who want everyone to remain armed at all times, even mothers during childbirth. I understand the anti-gun argument, which says that lethal weapons are dangerous and therefore nobody should weild them while bringing forth the Messiah, but I am equally persuaded by the argument that says “All governments always crucify Christ, and the best way to stop them from doing this is to carry a concealed cannon, even when a babe is protruding from your uterus; for, once Christ is crucified, the Church commences.” I see this rhetoric as airtight.
I’m also sort of hung up about whether clothing should be optional or not. I like collared blouses, I like gowns and skirts; but I dislike blue jeans, and I strongly dislike T-shirts. Naked bodies also look strange when they’re gathered in large groups and chasing you. It’s even weirder when they swim after you in Venice.
But I am all for the idea of electing a U.S. President. I even think that it would be fine for the Founding Fathers to go ahead and call the Leader of the Free World “Mister King”, as long as he or she couldn’t touch the Power Levers. The smart move also is to have a lot of folks who dress up and talk to the cameras on television. You make a lot of waves, that way.
And whether it’s proper for a Messiah to be forced to wear sandals as opposed to loafers and slacks, in an age that holds the marketplace as God, I say: Go ahead. Give it a shot. It can’t hurt to try. Just tell Franz Kafka to stop laughing.
4 comments:
-and even to this day and age, obviously not even the Marketplace can come to a final decision of whether thou shall conceal your cannon or not when addressing large groups on television!
Yes, and re "obviously not even the Marketplace can come to a final decision..." I find it funny that people ever personified the Market; and I don't see how anyone could ever have believed that it could decide anything. What Duchamp said about Art, I say about the Market: as a religion, it's not even as good as God.
I lean towards seeing this tendency as a very sad reflection of determinism. Exalting "the Market" to this personified independant being seems to have the same scary consequense for human kind as seeing "Society" as a given circumstance set in stone - as natural and rigid as gravity itself.
If the Market and Society are seen as nature given (as opposed to continuously created by, and for, people) it deprives us of any kind of responsibility, control and potential for making changes. If we, collectively, accept submitting to the Market and Society, instead of the other way around, all is lost.
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