The Unbearable Irony of Being
War always begins as a game.
Many a beast may toy with its game.
But none games so ardently as Man.
Asked the Grasshopper: "How do we know when a game is a game, and not, say, some travesty?"
Replied the Mantis: "A game is a game in so far as it does not resemble, (or exceed), the vicious contest for survival between animals of differing species."
War is never a game.
Give up sainthood. Renounce wisdom. Get rid of all your crap.
Suddenly, Adam & Eve appeared. And they saweth that they were a couple of sad naked freaks of Nature. Therefore, they went before the other animals of the jungle - the lions, the bears, the wolves, the sheep, the penguins, the saber tooth tigres - oh, and the T-Rex's - there were lots and lots of T-Rex's around.
And yay Adam & Eve did say before the animals, "Dudes, we'd kinda like to be a new species! But LOOK at us. We are vulnerable and childlike and always worrying about numbers and we've got the weirdest frickin gut bacteria!"
And the animals said, "What, you think can can have special privileges above us? No, we are sorry, TILT. Game over. If you want to be a new species, and possibly consume Planters' Peanuts, and so on, then you will have to struggle through the whole eat-or-get-eaten jungle thing, as required by that great serpent-bird god from the future, Charles Darwin. This is the law, and if you don't want to dither away like us imitating each other and eating each other and bugging the hell out of each other, then you must go extinct post haste and forsooth." (Animals talked like that in the old days).
But then Adam & Eve said, "Yeah, but we really figure we need to have special rights, see - cuz that way we can see each other as cause and effect, and so establish this whole universe called justice - and also money, money will be very important. But we can't have these human-equalising/destroying absolute, fundamentalist values, UNLESS we can simultaneously blind ourselves to all the entropy and chaos and risk and consequences of our actions, like those which YOU guys are constantly dealing with on a minute-to-minute basis, causing you to be - well - kinda stuck in your evolutionary niche. See - we believe in Modernism and infinite growth and going to where no animal has ever been before, namely, Church. And the toilet. Safe things, you know?"
"Nice try, but no dice, Andrew," said the animals.
"Adam."
"Oh, right - Adam... So, sorry, fuck off, you bother us."
And so, then Adam & Eve invented God.
"...to underwrite our Constitutional rights, including special human Consciousness," they rationalised.
And from that point on, they assumed they were better than all the animals, consigning animals to cages, along with human pollution, viruses, climate change, out of control forest fires, fleas, entropy, and so forth. Man became Exceptional, and was allowed to look at each other with complete sincerity and say to each other, and say,
"So what if we accidentally kill off shitloads of other species?! Its not like that's GENOCIDE or anything!"
And this was called Justice.
And Adam & Eve deftly employed God in the most Socially-Darwinian, dog-eat-dog way, according to the laws of the jungle, all en masse like cowards, such that when bad stuff would happen to the animals, Adam & Eve would pop out from behind walls of knowledge and gossip and declare,
"See! That was because GOD DOESN'T LIKE YOU! Boooo! God likes US! USA! USA! USA! USA!"
And when something good would happen to the animals, well, the animals would end up on alters and dinner plates, with little hungry humans praying devoutly over them, saying things like, "please forgive these wonderful animals whom God wants in our bloodstream. Thank you for your time. Come again."
Oh - and, of course, God saw that it was good.
I thought that went without saying.
Many a beast may toy with its game.
But none games so ardently as Man.
Asked the Grasshopper: "How do we know when a game is a game, and not, say, some travesty?"
Replied the Mantis: "A game is a game in so far as it does not resemble, (or exceed), the vicious contest for survival between animals of differing species."
War is never a game.
Give up sainthood. Renounce wisdom. Get rid of all your crap.
Suddenly, Adam & Eve appeared. And they saweth that they were a couple of sad naked freaks of Nature. Therefore, they went before the other animals of the jungle - the lions, the bears, the wolves, the sheep, the penguins, the saber tooth tigres - oh, and the T-Rex's - there were lots and lots of T-Rex's around.
And yay Adam & Eve did say before the animals, "Dudes, we'd kinda like to be a new species! But LOOK at us. We are vulnerable and childlike and always worrying about numbers and we've got the weirdest frickin gut bacteria!"
And the animals said, "What, you think can can have special privileges above us? No, we are sorry, TILT. Game over. If you want to be a new species, and possibly consume Planters' Peanuts, and so on, then you will have to struggle through the whole eat-or-get-eaten jungle thing, as required by that great serpent-bird god from the future, Charles Darwin. This is the law, and if you don't want to dither away like us imitating each other and eating each other and bugging the hell out of each other, then you must go extinct post haste and forsooth." (Animals talked like that in the old days).
But then Adam & Eve said, "Yeah, but we really figure we need to have special rights, see - cuz that way we can see each other as cause and effect, and so establish this whole universe called justice - and also money, money will be very important. But we can't have these human-equalising/destroying absolute, fundamentalist values, UNLESS we can simultaneously blind ourselves to all the entropy and chaos and risk and consequences of our actions, like those which YOU guys are constantly dealing with on a minute-to-minute basis, causing you to be - well - kinda stuck in your evolutionary niche. See - we believe in Modernism and infinite growth and going to where no animal has ever been before, namely, Church. And the toilet. Safe things, you know?"
"Nice try, but no dice, Andrew," said the animals.
"Adam."
"Oh, right - Adam... So, sorry, fuck off, you bother us."
And so, then Adam & Eve invented God.
"...to underwrite our Constitutional rights, including special human Consciousness," they rationalised.
And from that point on, they assumed they were better than all the animals, consigning animals to cages, along with human pollution, viruses, climate change, out of control forest fires, fleas, entropy, and so forth. Man became Exceptional, and was allowed to look at each other with complete sincerity and say to each other, and say,
"So what if we accidentally kill off shitloads of other species?! Its not like that's GENOCIDE or anything!"
And this was called Justice.
And Adam & Eve deftly employed God in the most Socially-Darwinian, dog-eat-dog way, according to the laws of the jungle, all en masse like cowards, such that when bad stuff would happen to the animals, Adam & Eve would pop out from behind walls of knowledge and gossip and declare,
"See! That was because GOD DOESN'T LIKE YOU! Boooo! God likes US! USA! USA! USA! USA!"
And when something good would happen to the animals, well, the animals would end up on alters and dinner plates, with little hungry humans praying devoutly over them, saying things like, "please forgive these wonderful animals whom God wants in our bloodstream. Thank you for your time. Come again."
Oh - and, of course, God saw that it was good.
I thought that went without saying.