I wrote this in February 2001. The date is significant in that it is a few months before September 11. Although the content is still true in my mind, I would probably not be in this kind of optimistic frame of mind. Beelzebob, Mamon, Lucifer et al seem to have temporarily lured some of our brothers to their camp. I hope this is a temporary derailment and that they will soon find their way back into the world of reason, truth, beauty, peace, and love.
We have come a long way
since the Neanderthal
we live much longer now
eat much better food
that we don't have to go hunting for.
Our ancestors, used to risk getting killed
for a piece of meat
or at best, die later of a wound sustained
while hunting for a meal
or running away from wild beasts.
Now a great many of us
get our meat and bread,
fruits and veggies,
at the market, the super market, or the hypermarket
depending on where we live,
from Taiwan to Madagascar,
from Norway to Wagadougou,
America, Honolulu,
to Fiji, Tasmania, Kabul, Samarghand,
We cook our food easily on a stove
sit in a warm room,
protected from wind and rain and snow storms
and many other cruel elements of Nature,
we sit in artificial, man-made rooms,
unthreatened by lions and bears, and other wild beasts,
and we eat in front of that loveliest of all human inventions:
the television.
We can afford now
to watch National Geographic on TV
and self righteously worry
about endangered species,
tigers of Bengal, lions of Persia, panda from China,
etcetera etcetera, (lots of etcetera)
who used to all
hunt us for food.
More of us live longer and happier lives than ever before
just look at the statistics from 200 years ago,
500 years ago, 1000 years ago……
thanks mostly to plumbing and penicillin
plus all those other miracle drugs, magical surgeries,
miracle technologies that cure, maintain, inform,
entertain us
in far corners of the earth,
televised, telephoned, telemedicined,
tele-commu-nicated to.
Not one dull moment
not even time to contemplate all these miracles,
taken for granted in daily life.
No time off from boulevard News 24 hours a day,
to think and realize: it is only a small, minuscule number
who are violent. Good guys outnumber bad guys
by a huge margin.
The media's yellow journalism and their boulevard press
want to make us believe otherwise.
they put the spot light on the small number of half wit,
terrorist kids in high schools and elsewhere.
Large numbers of us are kind, quiet, peace-loving people.
We are only ignored by the boulevard press media.
We don't make the covers of magazines and all those other new zines
Even in seemingly conflict and trouble spots,
they exclusively report on the bad guys.
They ignore all the polite, kind, caring young people
of these trouble spots
No wonder violence is propagated and encouraged.
The rare serial killers are shown on TV and magazines,
their minds and lives dissected ad nauseam, day and night.
Half wits and marginals, who might otherwise stay calm
are excited into action. The quickest way to be on the cover of blah,blah… magazine, is a chilling mass murder.
For such marginal half wits,
TV has replaced God.
We want to know how the scientists' minds work,
how the artists create those marvelous works,
how do they give up TV, close the door,
turn off the phone, say no to invitations to party,
and instead of skiing, and a million other pleasures
that the flesh is heir to, sequester themselves
to create something out of nothing?
We want to know how good governments work,
we are sick to death of being shown the anatomy
of the brains of half wits and criminals,
plus the minutia of their thought process.
That is only for criminologists, and maybe detectives.
Not for us the general public.
in the boulevard media, unlike in reality,
Beelzebob, Mamon, Mephisto and company,
have won over.
In real life, however,
we have come a long way since the Neanderthal.
And we definitely
could use a pat on the back.
February 2001