Crackdowns, clampdowns, etc. The excuse of the prudent and down-to-earth for having cracked down, clamped down etc on ideas too outrageous and absurd, all of it done for ‘the right reasons.’
Lies, of course. Excuses designed to hide the true motives behind the purge: cowardice, envy, insecurity and malice dressed up as responsibility. They sound right on paper, masquerading as ‘patience,’ ‘discretion,’ ‘let’s think about it a little more,’ ‘be careful,’ ‘why risk it?’ — and other classic excuses — toeing the prudent line, wasting precious time. Noble in a flashy way, informed and thoughtful, or so they claim; they’re pretty much fake. Nothing but excuses and yeah-buts. All pretext and delay mechanism, confusion tactics and procrastination, smoke and mirrors all the way through. Dogma, mantras the rote experts repeat expertly, word for word, as taught by the gurus and psychologists. Take it easy, chill, relax, take a pill to help you wash down the nerves, don’t sweat it, don’t overextend yourself, be smart, be cool. Let it go. Be content with the simple things. Believe in justice, and everything will be alright.
If only the Neanderthals were here to add their primordial two cents to the argument. They would remind everyone how easy they took it back in the day when it mattered the most, and bye-bye went thick-brow existence. Homo sapiens marched across a field of broken neanderthal dreams and seized the day. Let’s not mention the broken neanderthal bones and their assimilated genes.
Fact is, surrendering to contentment is not a sound choice, and neither is the willingness to settle for something well within one’s reach, something easy and convenient, foregoing the crazy visions and the risks that go with it.
Settling for the done and dusted and the so very dated is a horrible choice, self-dissolving and crass, material fit for the end of days, if not imagination itself. The end of. A horrendous, self-defeating choice.
Hubris, on the other hand — it’s the dark horse intelligent agents bet on. What one needs to remain present and relevant.
No? Then turn the other cheek and get ready to have your head smashed to a pulp, and thank Peter at the pearly gates — or your pearly-toothed counselor whose invoice amounts to a few K’s a quarter — for the opportunity to be fodder while I, irreverent shit that I am, cultivate my future on the compost your carcass provides me.
Don’t forget to say thank you.
Intrigued? Watch this space for more.
From the collection of writings EON: THE ANGRY COMING OF AGE