Thursday, August 30, 2007

FOOD AND SHELTER

Walden Pond


To eat and not be eaten
Are life’s odds to be beaten.
Just ask a gnu
Found in a zoo
And he’ll tell you
A cage does not life sweeten.

To thrive and stay alive
The purpose of this human hive,
None here to eat us,
Just us to beat us
In games that complete us
With our drive to survive.

Is our cage a fight or a flight
From wars we dream up at night
All safe in our beds
All lost in our heads
We lock in our dreads
That our behavior's not quite right?

Sanity in the natural realm
Is knowing to heel to the helm,
When it changes go with it
To not is to myth it
Coming about, you might miss it
And let the boom your head overwhelm.

Sanity in the city is such a pity
Nodding yes and looking pretty
The helm is under lock
The ship’s aground on rock
The only boom’s in bombs and stock
Intelligent design by committee.

The way out is clear and here,
Mind’s distorted by our fear
If I hit you and you don’t hit back
I will await your impending attack
Until the proverbial cows come back
While you’re at the pub sharing beer.

All we need is food and shelter
Not factories' and cities' helter-skelter
Heating up the atmosphere
Herding up the sheep to shear
For profits taken far from here
By the elites who own the smelter.

6 comments:

Garth said...

'Intelligent design by committee'
Love it :]

troutsky said...

Food and shelter are no doubt the prime necessities but a little cultural production can be nice. How to allocate, this is the question.

Yodood said...

Ah, Trout, how you love your administration concerns. It is quite interesting how ones worth amongst the tribe was likely based on ones deficit/asset to the commonwealth in the process of hunting, gathering and protecting the camp from predators. Once these considerations were satisfied the leisure afforded time for creative tribal members to develop better methods, tools and living conditions, decorate them and oneself, make music, dance and tell stories.

So far, we have seen no need for an allocator, though we certainly have developed the trappings of "cultural production."

And here we come to the rub, Have you ever known someone who demanded so much from others that it was impossible to give them a gift? That it was received as either pity, charity, or about time, there being no compassion within them by which to recognize compassionate acts.

Most creative people are happy to share the fruits of their labor over and above whatever profit it may afford them, unless they have met the demanding beggar and been driven into seclusion. Here is the bone of contention and the seed of institutional begging. Ayn Rand was guilty of insisting that products of creativity be considered a gift without which the demands could not exist. Our forgetting the difference between artifice and nature is at the heart of the problem as exemplified by the statute that grants personhood to corporations.

Government in the business of allocating is precisely the entire problem with its practice of both democracy and socialism.
the problem

Unknown said...

You say -
the way here is very clear
sweep the decks
and steal the fear.
For governments only survive
promoting terror
to survive,
don't you know,
propaganda keeps us all
alive
The alternative?
Heaven's above!
Do we want truth,
can we cope with love?

Unknown said...

Sanity's a matter of opinion
Defined by master, not minion
Of course, those who lead
Are those with most greed
Who wouldn't know truth or love
Even if some god shouted it from above.
Their byword's fear
And that is all they want you to hear.
They want us to admit
even if it is forced from us bit by bit
That we are mad
and they're not bad.

Yodood said...

Minx, Vanilla,
I've only hoped to be so groked 'til now. And yet, with such confirmation I get that acculturated urge that wishes more folks got it even half as well. Thank you both

In my darker moments I see how the illusion of understanding is merely one standing under branches of culture's and ones own conclusions for shade from contradictory experiential enlightenment available for infinite interpretation everywhere eternally. It's kinda my theme for the next post as if their weren't just one theme to them all.