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| George Carlin |
If this blog is about anything, it is about new
perspectives. Perspective, insight,
understanding, comprehension – whatever you want to call it. Good or bad (usually kind of bad). And what perspectives George Carlin offered
up. Definitely a muse and inspiration. A quote:
There
is just enough bullshit to hold things together in this country. Bullshit is the glue that binds us as a
nation. Where would we be without our
safe, familiar, American bullshit? Land of the free, home of the brave, the
American dream, all men are equal, justice is blind, the press is free, your
vote counts, business is honest, the good guys win, the police are on your
side, God is watching you, your standard of living will never decline… and
everything is going to be just fine— The official national bullshit story. I
call it the American okie doke.
So, I’ll add to this idea that economics play a part, that
when times are good – err, well, even when times are just okay or even marginal
– people go along with all the bullshit that George listed above. Even when there are cracks in the facade. Even when people get the odd glimpse behind
the curtain or when you see the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes.
But during bad times all the cant and promise offered by
politics attract people in earnest – politics is the only way they find that
offers a solution to what ails them.
They will vote and exercise their civic right and that will make things
more, well, okay. But remember, per experience
and per the sage George Carlin:
Your vote counts =
bullshit.
So I’m stepping away from political news and for a few
weeks, at least. I did this earlier in
the year. If anything I would like to,
yes, gain perspective: what ways do we have to affect change? Or, how do we really cut through the
bullshit? I am not unaware that this may
lead to some grim conclusions, that the ability to control what gets changed has
been removed from the masses.
Look, its tough analyzing the present and then trying to
peer into the future with what you have learned. I have a case of doomer
fatigue, a term also used here. The synapses that light up when I read about
some new angle, some new deception, have fired so much that they need a rest. In one sense I feel like a follower of William Miller’s
in 1844 when Jesus failed to return per Miller’s preaching. Many other religions or sects have made such
eschatological statements here in our, um, latter days.
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| William Miller |
The bailiwick of doomers is different though, as it pertains
to the slow crumbling or rapid implosion of civilizations. We/they imagine what the folks at the end of
the Classic
Period of the Maya were thinking.
Or, what a Roman citizen in Britain thought when the Rescript of
Honorius arrived telling them that no military assistance would be arriving
from Rome and that they were on their own.
Remember, as Stereolab states:
“It’s not eternal, imperishable / Oh yes it will go / It’s not eternal,
imperishable / The dinosaur rule”.
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| Emperor Honorius |
So we/those doomers (can I just own it, that I am a doomer –
doesn’t have to be bad) make ourselves out to be voices in the wilderness. We listen to other voices in the wilderness. When you talk about cataclysmic futures, or
any kind of futures, the material-based doomer must take on some of the
trappings of the religious. Politics are
a component of this vortex: let’s put politics on hold for a few weeks.
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| St. John the Baptist Preaching by Mattia Preti |
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