"The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." - Confucius
That's all very well, mister Confucius, but what if you want to create a mountain? If you're omnipotent it should be a easy shmeasy, but even if you're only pretending to have every power conceivable so as to scare yourself up some followers, it can't be too hard, judging from the enormous amount of 'Grand Theft Planetoid' reports the Ultrasupermega Intergalacticspaceuniverse Policeforcepower (or UIP) got, some five thousand years ago, at the same time a conspicuous blue planet suddenly sprang up near Alpha Centauri. But we're not here to point fingers. We're here to enlighten, you with a little luck, me with little luck (I'll finally find out what people are not interested in reading).
So, this God (the quotation marks are still there, just, use your imagination) God decided to create the earth, the universe and everything, which he might have been too late in trying, as the UIP reports prove irrefutably that there was something else already, but there are two characteristics that all of His (the capital letter purely for clarity's sake) followers in the higher echelons share to the last, namely the ability to lie through the teeth and a very bloated sense of theatricality. Therefore, it's not a far stretch to assume that 'God' (the quotation marks just as a reminder) was the original master of theatrical lies and embellished this creation story a bit; just a bit.
But, to make a small accomplishment into a small story: six days later, there was Earth, just as it is today, with dinosaurs, fossil fuels and diamonds, all created in His infinite wisdom. It was perfect. But, as we all know, natural beauty bores rather quickly. And as even somewhat omnipotent beings have urges, God created his toyboy, the father of the whole of mankind and the reason that everyone today is always bitching about the weather if they can’t find anything else to bitch about: Adam. Now, I’m sure all you chauvinist pigs are going to say: ‘But hey, wasn’t Eve the one who brought about all of this ‘casting out’ business and shouldn’t we blame her and her entire ‘look at me, I’ve got internal genitals’ gender?’ Well, no, because Adam was not only the first man and first human, he was also the first proof of this God’s lack of perfection (and that’s also saying that the earth was perfect before we came along, which might fit into that unavoidable idea that anything is better in the past tense). Adam was human, which means that Adam was horribly imperfect (as are we all). Thus, as God failed to create something perfect, he himself cannot be perfect.
Of course, the theologists are now screaming that my idea of perfection is not God’s Idea of Perfection, but as I’m created in His image, I’m sure inherited I His ideals as well. No, the more possible – and slightly unnerving – option is that He never intended to create something perfect, that He was, in fact, a scientist without any morals who created His own strain of guinea pigs. And then, when we turned against Him, He would first try to repress us, but when that didn’t work, he tried again with peace, love and a stronger social structure, so that he could create vast networks of followers who would fight each other in a war for supremacy until only the strongest survived, so that he could enlist them in His awe inspiring galactic armada. Morally, this would place him far below the Nazi scientists, but I don’t really want to be lynched, so I sternly reject this theory.
No, God was imperfect, that’s for sure.
donderdag, augustus 23, 2007
dinsdag, augustus 21, 2007
Genisis
Sorry, ik ben weer aan iets nieuws begonnen. U krijgt dus twee verhaaltjes door elkaar, pas op en reik u niet te ver.
The Garden of Eden and the stories concerning this mythical and mystical place have a prominent place not only in Christian theology, but also in every nook and cranny of our sizeable (no use for false modesty, is there) Western civilization. In our 'crime & punishment' mindset – coupled with the unavoidable idea that anything is better in the past tense – we have sought to interpret this is a number of ways, which some people still tend to do with religious texts, luckily, I might add. But how dramatic and futile our dealings with this tale have been. We have scoured the lands in search of this happy place filled with holly and delight, and the only reason for this that I can descry is that the world can never have enough places of pilgrimage (and really, holy men, we have enough, you can stop now, bury the symbols, whether it's half a circle, a cross or two triangles, I don't care, leave the mathematical figures to the people who know how to handle them, namely the mathematicians).
My extensive sources assure me that both Adam and Eve got their eviction notice at the very latest eight years and then some after, well, the creation of the earth, the universe and everything – although the earliest sources place it at some eight days after creation, or two days after they were created; those were some damn tough babies – and we know that our antagonist, we'll call him 'God' for simplicity, had made sure his children had not a care in the world. As such, they had no need for any kind of tools or even clothes, which makes it impossible to actually ever find that special little place (I mean the Garden, 'cause I've already found my special little place...). Unless there's still an ominous apple tree somewhere, with a snake hissing tempting, uhm, hisses; that would be a dead giveaway.
On a side note, I would've gone with The Holly Bush of Knowledge. I mean, come on, I would pluck an apple even if it didn't give me superpowers (five thousand years ago, rational thought was something special, apparently); I'd say, let them vomit a bit first, give them some diarrhea (from the holly berries) and then we'll see whether they still want their precious knowledge.
But, no, how dim-witted this 'God' person was is not really the issue here, we can draw our own conclusions on that. No, it's the story itself that I'm interested in, the classical 'entity creates boy in own likeness', 'boy is lonely so entity creates girl out of boy', 'boy and girl are deceived by snake', 'boy and girl eat an apple', 'boy and girl elope together, leaving behind an angry old entity'. A lot of stories end with angry, old entities.
Now, there are a few oddities here (apart from the fact that it lacks sense, reason or even the smallest snippet of believability, but that's always the case with religious writing (except for 'Star Trek'), so I'll let it slide), and as my throngs of thought trains tear their thrillingly tentative tracks through my head (ok, I overreached), let's analyze it as meticulously as possible. Lo and behold, a scientist at work!
The Garden of Eden and the stories concerning this mythical and mystical place have a prominent place not only in Christian theology, but also in every nook and cranny of our sizeable (no use for false modesty, is there) Western civilization. In our 'crime & punishment' mindset – coupled with the unavoidable idea that anything is better in the past tense – we have sought to interpret this is a number of ways, which some people still tend to do with religious texts, luckily, I might add. But how dramatic and futile our dealings with this tale have been. We have scoured the lands in search of this happy place filled with holly and delight, and the only reason for this that I can descry is that the world can never have enough places of pilgrimage (and really, holy men, we have enough, you can stop now, bury the symbols, whether it's half a circle, a cross or two triangles, I don't care, leave the mathematical figures to the people who know how to handle them, namely the mathematicians).
My extensive sources assure me that both Adam and Eve got their eviction notice at the very latest eight years and then some after, well, the creation of the earth, the universe and everything – although the earliest sources place it at some eight days after creation, or two days after they were created; those were some damn tough babies – and we know that our antagonist, we'll call him 'God' for simplicity, had made sure his children had not a care in the world. As such, they had no need for any kind of tools or even clothes, which makes it impossible to actually ever find that special little place (I mean the Garden, 'cause I've already found my special little place...). Unless there's still an ominous apple tree somewhere, with a snake hissing tempting, uhm, hisses; that would be a dead giveaway.
On a side note, I would've gone with The Holly Bush of Knowledge. I mean, come on, I would pluck an apple even if it didn't give me superpowers (five thousand years ago, rational thought was something special, apparently); I'd say, let them vomit a bit first, give them some diarrhea (from the holly berries) and then we'll see whether they still want their precious knowledge.
But, no, how dim-witted this 'God' person was is not really the issue here, we can draw our own conclusions on that. No, it's the story itself that I'm interested in, the classical 'entity creates boy in own likeness', 'boy is lonely so entity creates girl out of boy', 'boy and girl are deceived by snake', 'boy and girl eat an apple', 'boy and girl elope together, leaving behind an angry old entity'. A lot of stories end with angry, old entities.
Now, there are a few oddities here (apart from the fact that it lacks sense, reason or even the smallest snippet of believability, but that's always the case with religious writing (except for 'Star Trek'), so I'll let it slide), and as my throngs of thought trains tear their thrillingly tentative tracks through my head (ok, I overreached), let's analyze it as meticulously as possible. Lo and behold, a scientist at work!
zondag, augustus 19, 2007
Not yet, but soon (5)
And this leads us seamlessly back to Timmy, the loveable junkie. I know that last part for a fact, because we were screen buddies at college. This just meant that we got high and watched television series for the better part of our higher education. We even went back to some of the early twenty first century stuff, which was often better than the mind numbing series we had in our time, but the joints and the alcohol made us pretty, uhm, unfazed by this lack of quality. The problem was that while I did manage to at the very least show up for my exams, Timmy never did. The closest he ever got to taking an exam was doing the assistant in a nearby classroom. He still failed, however, because he hadn’t managed to get her off. Imagine, her orgasm could have changed the world. By the time I graduated, he had started to simply add the hashish to his packet of tobacco and carry around a hipflask filled with moonshine. The day I showed him my diploma was the last time I saw him. Until he brought about the end of the world, that is.
I called him a loveable junkie, and he really was. I don’t know if you’ve ever met junkies, but usually they’re invasive for pretty much all of the senses (in case you’re brave enough to ever lick one). But Timmy managed to keep his personal hygiene on a not unacceptable level, and he kept to himself, mostly, which is something people appreciate from addicted drug users. When he had reached that ominous thirty something age, he had become an integral part of the inner-city of his hometown on the Western European coast. Nobody minded him, and nobody really cared either, but it was an arrangement that seemed to work for everybody, albeit by the grace of Timmy’s uncle, who died when he was a much less ominous twenty something and left him enough money to remove his last care in the world: his next fix.
Now, I have been talking to you about the end of the world, but as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. Sure, it was the end of our civilization as we knew it; sure, billions of people died. But we’re humanity! We’re the fleshy, pink-skinned big-headed cockroaches of the galaxy! Sort of. Which means that that ‘heroic tale of a number of Earth’s survivors’ isn’t that heroic at all, and that Timmy really shouldn’t feel too bad about himself, as he was pretty much just a catalyst. Well, more or less, because a catalyst quickens a chemical reaction while staying out of it and emerging unscathed, but Timmy was already quite scathed at the time our story starts (and it will soon enough, keep your pants on), and he was dead before the reaction had even really started, but still, I’m sure you get my point.
I called him a loveable junkie, and he really was. I don’t know if you’ve ever met junkies, but usually they’re invasive for pretty much all of the senses (in case you’re brave enough to ever lick one). But Timmy managed to keep his personal hygiene on a not unacceptable level, and he kept to himself, mostly, which is something people appreciate from addicted drug users. When he had reached that ominous thirty something age, he had become an integral part of the inner-city of his hometown on the Western European coast. Nobody minded him, and nobody really cared either, but it was an arrangement that seemed to work for everybody, albeit by the grace of Timmy’s uncle, who died when he was a much less ominous twenty something and left him enough money to remove his last care in the world: his next fix.
Now, I have been talking to you about the end of the world, but as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, it’s not as dramatic as it sounds. Sure, it was the end of our civilization as we knew it; sure, billions of people died. But we’re humanity! We’re the fleshy, pink-skinned big-headed cockroaches of the galaxy! Sort of. Which means that that ‘heroic tale of a number of Earth’s survivors’ isn’t that heroic at all, and that Timmy really shouldn’t feel too bad about himself, as he was pretty much just a catalyst. Well, more or less, because a catalyst quickens a chemical reaction while staying out of it and emerging unscathed, but Timmy was already quite scathed at the time our story starts (and it will soon enough, keep your pants on), and he was dead before the reaction had even really started, but still, I’m sure you get my point.
zondag, augustus 05, 2007
Not yet, but soon (4)
But, chaos theory. As I said, it does not choose chaos over order, but instead it simply identifies chaos as a more complex form of order. We feared it because we thought chaos meant a loss of control (and boy, do we dig control), but the theory showed us that through ‘chaos’ – and I use this term loosely, as it has little to do with hooligans at a sports match – we could sustain or even increase our level of control, while greatly improving both individual and collective freedoms. As we began to realize that everything is tied in to everything else, we learned how to influence without interfering, by adjusting the elements we can control directly, to change the elements we don’t control. One of the greatest achievements so far is that every single citizen of the Human Empire now has common sense. It wasn’t that hard, really; all that was needed was a high standard of education across the board. Now, this wasn’t a walk in the park, a good education costs more than a nickel and a dime, but it brought down expenses in nearly every other area of the government budget, simply because less people were needed for control and repression. The reason it took humanity so long to figure this out, was that everyone was convinced that common sense was tied into a person’s intelligence. Don’t know why, really, the world isn’t that hard to understand if you receive the means to understand it a young enough age. But you all know that, of course, unless you’re one of those lunatics of the Moon Values Coalition who keep yammering about ‘the glory days of the free market’. Or perhaps if this manuscript has somehow traveled back in time to a point before the Chaos Revolution, but that seems highly unlikely.
maandag, juli 30, 2007
Not yet, but soon (4)
There is a sociological axiom amongst the sentient races of the known universe that have escaped their planetary cradles (there are only four sentient races that we know of, so far, including humans, but this sounds better than ‘the other three sentient races had this idea…’): for a pre-space age society to develop into a galactic nation, a planetary revolution must first take place, wiping away racial struggle, religion and the institutions that keep both alive. That revolution can only come about through a general understanding (although not necessarily a conscious one) of the concepts and consequences of the chaos theory. These sentient races – they don’t like being called ‘aliens’ and they’re a bit more advanced than us (think lightsabers and warpdrives, which is odd, because we thought about it first, even though they managed to build it first) so I’m going to be diplomatic – came up with this axiom after all three had gone through this process and compared their stories to one another. When a similar thing happened on Earth, they were all really smug about it, but then, it was the first true feat of galactic sociology.
What this chaos theory does is not, as some people thought or wanted others to believe, choose chaos over order. This wasn’t a light or dark choice, no universal struggle between good and evil. That would come later, apparently, according to the sociological axiom of the five sentient races we still don’t know of, simply due to the fact that they have left our plane of existence and went to the Plane of the Struggle of Good versus Evil. They played curling continuously, and whichever side won three matches would be Reigning Ethical Alignment for the day. After a week, Good and Evil joined hands to find a way to escape that hellish dimension, but they were quickly opposed by the United Curling Amateurs. The battle continues ‘till this day.
What this chaos theory does is not, as some people thought or wanted others to believe, choose chaos over order. This wasn’t a light or dark choice, no universal struggle between good and evil. That would come later, apparently, according to the sociological axiom of the five sentient races we still don’t know of, simply due to the fact that they have left our plane of existence and went to the Plane of the Struggle of Good versus Evil. They played curling continuously, and whichever side won three matches would be Reigning Ethical Alignment for the day. After a week, Good and Evil joined hands to find a way to escape that hellish dimension, but they were quickly opposed by the United Curling Amateurs. The battle continues ‘till this day.
vrijdag, juli 27, 2007
Not yet, but soon (3)
Of course, you really need to keep you population occupied at all times, because as soon as they start to seriously consider all that mumbo jumbo, they’ll not only realize that those ‘holy men’ are nothing but a bunch of manipulative liars and/or idiots, or at the very least misguided, but also that even if this ‘God’ person exists, he’s a tyrant to be overthrown, not a benevolent ruler to be worshipped. I am talking about monotheistic religions in this case, obviously, and the difference between those and the polytheistic religions is quite important, from a social planning perspective. You see, when only a single God exists, there exists but a single truth, a single way of life, a single sexual position. People will worship with fervor and zeal, but external contacts, or even the slightest internal social change, will light the torches, sharpen the pitchforks and erect the stakes. Polytheism is generally more relaxed, simply because anyone can pretty much invent any god they want and no one can disprove him or her, at the risk of disproving one’s own god. This rarely works on its own, however, because any young society needs more stringent rules than those a polytheistic religion can provide in itself. Once another system has provided a stable counterweight – a caste system, or a strong nationalistic feeling, or some such – the problem no longer becomes the religion, as that has become little more than pro forma packaging.
But all that doesn’t really matter. Order has always been humanity’s end goal, as far as we actually have an end goal. Yeah sure, you could talk through your neck or out of your ass about divine beings and chosen races and pots of gold at the end of a rainbow, and you’ll always find people stupid, naieve or desperate enough to listen, but that doesn’t mean there’s an ounce of truth in these doctrines. None at all! No, order has always been our end goal. Every society up until we first managed to escape our atmosphere has tried to achieve this by total control. Whether it is a dictatorship that uses whip and collar, or a republic that uses money and media, the underlying theory never changes: let the elite rule the country and make sure the general populace doesn’t stray beyond the rules of your society. Chaos is to be avoided at all costs, because it would simply destroy the elite’s power, which is not something that is to even be considered. And who can blame them? People have shown time and time again that they are in need of leadership, that even an oppressive regime is preferable to no regime at all. But humanity evolved – and this caused a double rift with the old regimes, because not only did humanity become held back by the old ways, those same old ways had trouble to even recognize that evolution existed, let alone that humanity had indeed evolved. It’s like the chicken and the egg: ten seconds of logical thought tells us that the egg had to be first, because otherwise we’d have an animal that resembled a chicken, but didn’t come out of an egg (and therefore can’t be a chicken). I mean, QED, but still we debated and discussed and paid academics to write articles on it. Similarly, it was clear that by the time nobody cared about Paris Hilton anymore (which was, in fact, long overdue and thus could actually be seen as a counter-argument), the old institutions could no longer rule by virtue of the people. More and more, repression was used against forms of non-violent dissent. Because while it were the institutions that had provided their populations with the means of fully transcending their baser instincts (I’m talking about greed, violence and stupidity; sex stopped being a problem by the time the pope declared that he always used Durex’ topsafe condoms when clubbing in Rome’s gay quarter. It was a great day for Christianity.) the institutions couldn’t cope with their ‘children’ growing up.
But all that doesn’t really matter. Order has always been humanity’s end goal, as far as we actually have an end goal. Yeah sure, you could talk through your neck or out of your ass about divine beings and chosen races and pots of gold at the end of a rainbow, and you’ll always find people stupid, naieve or desperate enough to listen, but that doesn’t mean there’s an ounce of truth in these doctrines. None at all! No, order has always been our end goal. Every society up until we first managed to escape our atmosphere has tried to achieve this by total control. Whether it is a dictatorship that uses whip and collar, or a republic that uses money and media, the underlying theory never changes: let the elite rule the country and make sure the general populace doesn’t stray beyond the rules of your society. Chaos is to be avoided at all costs, because it would simply destroy the elite’s power, which is not something that is to even be considered. And who can blame them? People have shown time and time again that they are in need of leadership, that even an oppressive regime is preferable to no regime at all. But humanity evolved – and this caused a double rift with the old regimes, because not only did humanity become held back by the old ways, those same old ways had trouble to even recognize that evolution existed, let alone that humanity had indeed evolved. It’s like the chicken and the egg: ten seconds of logical thought tells us that the egg had to be first, because otherwise we’d have an animal that resembled a chicken, but didn’t come out of an egg (and therefore can’t be a chicken). I mean, QED, but still we debated and discussed and paid academics to write articles on it. Similarly, it was clear that by the time nobody cared about Paris Hilton anymore (which was, in fact, long overdue and thus could actually be seen as a counter-argument), the old institutions could no longer rule by virtue of the people. More and more, repression was used against forms of non-violent dissent. Because while it were the institutions that had provided their populations with the means of fully transcending their baser instincts (I’m talking about greed, violence and stupidity; sex stopped being a problem by the time the pope declared that he always used Durex’ topsafe condoms when clubbing in Rome’s gay quarter. It was a great day for Christianity.) the institutions couldn’t cope with their ‘children’ growing up.
dinsdag, juli 24, 2007
On a side note
Meer en meer mensen spenderen, al dan niet professioneel, heelder dagen voor hun computer, vrijwel zonder fout met een internet aansluiting.
Omdat het belangrijk is om geregeld even uw gedachten te verzetten, als is het maar een halve minuut (kwestie van geconcentreerd te kunnen blijven werken, hein), geef ik u drie links, waar u naar believen eens op kan klikken en kijken.
Vampiers
Ridders
Robots
Ik weet dat u nieuwsgierig bent, dus klik, kijk eens rond en wie weet, misschien kan u zichzelf nog wel wat amuseren...
En u zou er mij ook een pleziertje mee doen, dus de wereld wordt er alleen maar beter van.
[Edit: en omdat bevreemding ook wel eens als aansporing kan werken, krijgt u er nog eentje in dezelfde trant:
Bananen]
Omdat het belangrijk is om geregeld even uw gedachten te verzetten, als is het maar een halve minuut (kwestie van geconcentreerd te kunnen blijven werken, hein), geef ik u drie links, waar u naar believen eens op kan klikken en kijken.
Vampiers
Ridders
Robots
Ik weet dat u nieuwsgierig bent, dus klik, kijk eens rond en wie weet, misschien kan u zichzelf nog wel wat amuseren...
En u zou er mij ook een pleziertje mee doen, dus de wereld wordt er alleen maar beter van.
[Edit: en omdat bevreemding ook wel eens als aansporing kan werken, krijgt u er nog eentje in dezelfde trant:
Bananen]
maandag, juli 23, 2007
Not yet, but soon (2)
Aangezien ik een kind ben van mijn tijd en geduld iets was van toen absolute kutgroepjes toch nog iets meer moeite moesten doen om door te breken, heb ik ondertussen de eerste twee Potter boeken al maar als audio books gedownload. Ik bedoel geleend. Lenen mag nog, niet? Goed. Hier is deel twee van een wat vreemde tekst.
Hindsight is a bitch. We all know this: it’s a haughty, whiny, holier than thou bitch who rubs our mistakes in our faces and we don’t want that. When we make a mistake, we don’t want to study it, we don’t want to learn from it, we don’t want to grow and evolve. We just want to be left alone! But, retrospect ahoy, you can call me bitch for now. It’s odd, I’ve never before thought of myself as a haughty bitch, but the feelings it conjures are, well, confusing, to say the least. But that’s not the issue. The issue is something that might not seem readily connected to what I have told you already, but rest assured, there is an actual point in all this. You see, the issue, the main point that connects a silly guy named Timmy with the end of the world and the heroic tale of a number of Earth’s survivors which I will unfold before you as soon I have made the point I mentioned above, that main point is the chaos theory. Now I’m no scientist, but I can spew nonsense with the best of them, even with the philosophers, the uncrowned kings and queens of pointless debate, so sit back and relax while I probably completely reinvent the concepts of chaos in an unfounded and irrelevant manner: from the very first tribes of nomadic sub-humans (I’d like to think it is no longer politically incorrect when those discriminated against are no longer alive, but that’d open some nasty, well, solutions to that problem, which oddly enough worked quite well for the dodo; killed all of them in under two hundred years, a job well done, thank you very much) – yes, yes, there will be many useless and non-informative interjections, what’d you expect? – up until the 22nd century men and woman, humanity has always strived for order. Even those pseudo-theories about government that propagate chaos (or absence of order, whatever, you weirdoes), most notably the anarchists, either have structure or inevitably lead to structure. The first structure that inescapably emerges after any and all flits of chaos in human history is the most basic law that governs anything above microscopic level: the law of the jungle (so named, I assume, because the righteous explorers were convinced that their civilizations had long since left such basic impulses behind. They had already evolved to the level of unstoppable genocide, which is indeed pretty much the level we, greatly superior Western society, held until those damn hippies started organizing. I mean, who could have foreseen that? A bunch of stoners remembering their plans? Kids on LSD who still managed to find the capital to protest? Hippies are harmless, we thought. Oh, how wrong we were). And that works fairly well on a small scale. Children can be beaten into submission, minorities can be contained in reservations or in the afterlife, women can be hooded and gagged until they are nothing more than cooking baby factories. And there was order, and for a while, it was good. Now, in case you’re outraged after reading the last lines, you should probably either just grow into puberty, or, if you’ve already taken to shaving unwanted body hair, you might want to find a small house in the middle of nowhere and live like a hermit; your friends and family will appreciate it. But onto order on a large scale. It is an entirely different ballpark altogether when we want to establish order on a national, let alone planetary level. In the early stages, religion is the key factor. It’s like an all intrusive secret police that knows everything about everyone and is judge, jury, executioner and bribable official at the same time.
Hindsight is a bitch. We all know this: it’s a haughty, whiny, holier than thou bitch who rubs our mistakes in our faces and we don’t want that. When we make a mistake, we don’t want to study it, we don’t want to learn from it, we don’t want to grow and evolve. We just want to be left alone! But, retrospect ahoy, you can call me bitch for now. It’s odd, I’ve never before thought of myself as a haughty bitch, but the feelings it conjures are, well, confusing, to say the least. But that’s not the issue. The issue is something that might not seem readily connected to what I have told you already, but rest assured, there is an actual point in all this. You see, the issue, the main point that connects a silly guy named Timmy with the end of the world and the heroic tale of a number of Earth’s survivors which I will unfold before you as soon I have made the point I mentioned above, that main point is the chaos theory. Now I’m no scientist, but I can spew nonsense with the best of them, even with the philosophers, the uncrowned kings and queens of pointless debate, so sit back and relax while I probably completely reinvent the concepts of chaos in an unfounded and irrelevant manner: from the very first tribes of nomadic sub-humans (I’d like to think it is no longer politically incorrect when those discriminated against are no longer alive, but that’d open some nasty, well, solutions to that problem, which oddly enough worked quite well for the dodo; killed all of them in under two hundred years, a job well done, thank you very much) – yes, yes, there will be many useless and non-informative interjections, what’d you expect? – up until the 22nd century men and woman, humanity has always strived for order. Even those pseudo-theories about government that propagate chaos (or absence of order, whatever, you weirdoes), most notably the anarchists, either have structure or inevitably lead to structure. The first structure that inescapably emerges after any and all flits of chaos in human history is the most basic law that governs anything above microscopic level: the law of the jungle (so named, I assume, because the righteous explorers were convinced that their civilizations had long since left such basic impulses behind. They had already evolved to the level of unstoppable genocide, which is indeed pretty much the level we, greatly superior Western society, held until those damn hippies started organizing. I mean, who could have foreseen that? A bunch of stoners remembering their plans? Kids on LSD who still managed to find the capital to protest? Hippies are harmless, we thought. Oh, how wrong we were). And that works fairly well on a small scale. Children can be beaten into submission, minorities can be contained in reservations or in the afterlife, women can be hooded and gagged until they are nothing more than cooking baby factories. And there was order, and for a while, it was good. Now, in case you’re outraged after reading the last lines, you should probably either just grow into puberty, or, if you’ve already taken to shaving unwanted body hair, you might want to find a small house in the middle of nowhere and live like a hermit; your friends and family will appreciate it. But onto order on a large scale. It is an entirely different ballpark altogether when we want to establish order on a national, let alone planetary level. In the early stages, religion is the key factor. It’s like an all intrusive secret police that knows everything about everyone and is judge, jury, executioner and bribable official at the same time.
Confunded, or simply rotten
Nu het zevende en laatste deel van de onvolprezen (nu, ja) Harry Potter reeks diep in mijn bewustzijn verankerd ligt (nu, ja), leek het me tijd om eens een laatste keer alle boeken nog eens op rij te lezen, om redenen die voor u, Potter-leken, hoogst waarschijnlijk uw bevattingsvermogen te boven gaan (nu, ja).
Er is echter een probleem!
Want de combinatie van een goed hart en een slecht geheugen, heeft er voor gezorgd dat ik mijn allereerste boek (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) heb uitgeleend om prompt te vergeten aan wie.
Dus, een oproep uit de grond van mijn hart: als u mijn eerste Harry Potter boek in uw bezit hebt, ik zou het heel graag terug hebben. In ruil kan ik u altijd mijn verzameld werk doorsturen. Het mag dan wel niet hetzelfde niveau halen, er zijn alleszins heel wat minder exemplaren in omloop, dus wie weet, misschien wordt u er wel rijk van.
Het vervolg van het vorige stukje mag u over een week verwachten (of vroeger, als de verloren wees vroeger terugkomt).
Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.
Er is echter een probleem!
Want de combinatie van een goed hart en een slecht geheugen, heeft er voor gezorgd dat ik mijn allereerste boek (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone) heb uitgeleend om prompt te vergeten aan wie.
Dus, een oproep uit de grond van mijn hart: als u mijn eerste Harry Potter boek in uw bezit hebt, ik zou het heel graag terug hebben. In ruil kan ik u altijd mijn verzameld werk doorsturen. Het mag dan wel niet hetzelfde niveau halen, er zijn alleszins heel wat minder exemplaren in omloop, dus wie weet, misschien wordt u er wel rijk van.
Het vervolg van het vorige stukje mag u over een week verwachten (of vroeger, als de verloren wees vroeger terugkomt).
Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.
woensdag, juli 18, 2007
Not yet, but soon (1)
The end of the world had a rather silly cause. Of course, after taking a step back most serious matters have rather silly causes: the origins of our own universe have spawned the greatest collection of flatulency jokes in the history of sentient beings, which is saying something – every intelligent being seems to possess at least one hole or crevice that exudes smelly gasses, from time to time. But when their world came to an end – ok, fair enough, our world – humans had only just begun to tap this vast reservoir of universal humor. And things might have turned out rather differently, had we progressed further in our knowledge of flatulency humor (or, as some people still call it, ‘fart jokes’). But there’s not much use in wondering what might have been, as this rarely leads to a heartfelt ‘boy, that turned out well!’ but more often to some useless emotional flare of self pity and bemoanment – I’m not sure whether the latter is really a word, to be honest, but since I am telling you about the end of the world in retrospect, it means that the world has come to an end, so really, who cares?
Ah, yes, the end of the world. It was the early twenty second century. Throughout the entire previous century, the general populace had gotten more and more discontented, as governments traded their power for corporation backing. Civil liberties were sold for continuing economic growth, a few million at a time, and the global military industrial complex – after eliminating any and all forms of organized resistance – took over the policing duties of the governments, who lost their last vestiges of power. At the turn of the century, barely 0.01% of the population controlled over 99% of the resources. Fossil fuels had run out long before, but while viable affordable alternatives had been readily available for half a century, energy prices continued to rise steadily, year after year. The impoverished masses had only two things in abundance: able bodies and means of communication. Naturally, a resistance movement slowly formed, spanning the globe. The first isolated attacks in 2102 against corporate targets were condemned as acts of terrorism by a few fanatics. In 2104, the Global Humanitarian Resistance made itself known to the world. Their numbers grew exponentionally and in January 2105 the GHR sent the corporations, which had unified in the Earth Federation (although their detractors called it the Economic Front), a list of demands. In February 2105, civil war engulfed our planet, as the largest conflict anyone had ever conceived touched the lives of any and all inhabitants of Earth.
Boy, that was one depressing paragraph. You’ll have to excuse me, but the end of the world leaves even a generally jolly fellow like me with an urge to at the very least sigh. And I mean a really deep sigh. But as you may have noticed, this doesn’t seem very silly. Slightly silly, perhaps, but not silly enough to warrant the phrase ‘The end of the world had a rather silly cause’. No, the end of the world was actually caused by a thirty something guy called Timmy, who was already quite silly in his own right; silly and a bit pitiful, to an extent that none of his contemporaries thought he could influence his own life, let alone the course of human history. And perhaps he didn’t, perhaps he was but one of many elements that may have caused the end of the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that he, and only he, was the first actor in a chain of events comprised of reaction after reaction that would change not only human destiny, but the destiny of every single sentient being. I think. Well, ok, Timmy’s first action will most likely have had cause as well – not so much reason, though – but it was an internal cause; or, more precisely, an internal error, which happened rather frequently, poor Timmy.
Ah, yes, the end of the world. It was the early twenty second century. Throughout the entire previous century, the general populace had gotten more and more discontented, as governments traded their power for corporation backing. Civil liberties were sold for continuing economic growth, a few million at a time, and the global military industrial complex – after eliminating any and all forms of organized resistance – took over the policing duties of the governments, who lost their last vestiges of power. At the turn of the century, barely 0.01% of the population controlled over 99% of the resources. Fossil fuels had run out long before, but while viable affordable alternatives had been readily available for half a century, energy prices continued to rise steadily, year after year. The impoverished masses had only two things in abundance: able bodies and means of communication. Naturally, a resistance movement slowly formed, spanning the globe. The first isolated attacks in 2102 against corporate targets were condemned as acts of terrorism by a few fanatics. In 2104, the Global Humanitarian Resistance made itself known to the world. Their numbers grew exponentionally and in January 2105 the GHR sent the corporations, which had unified in the Earth Federation (although their detractors called it the Economic Front), a list of demands. In February 2105, civil war engulfed our planet, as the largest conflict anyone had ever conceived touched the lives of any and all inhabitants of Earth.
Boy, that was one depressing paragraph. You’ll have to excuse me, but the end of the world leaves even a generally jolly fellow like me with an urge to at the very least sigh. And I mean a really deep sigh. But as you may have noticed, this doesn’t seem very silly. Slightly silly, perhaps, but not silly enough to warrant the phrase ‘The end of the world had a rather silly cause’. No, the end of the world was actually caused by a thirty something guy called Timmy, who was already quite silly in his own right; silly and a bit pitiful, to an extent that none of his contemporaries thought he could influence his own life, let alone the course of human history. And perhaps he didn’t, perhaps he was but one of many elements that may have caused the end of the world, but that doesn’t change the fact that he, and only he, was the first actor in a chain of events comprised of reaction after reaction that would change not only human destiny, but the destiny of every single sentient being. I think. Well, ok, Timmy’s first action will most likely have had cause as well – not so much reason, though – but it was an internal cause; or, more precisely, an internal error, which happened rather frequently, poor Timmy.
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