The People is a beast of muddy brain
The People
The People is a beast of muddy brain
That knows not its own strength, and therefore stands
Loaded with wood and stone; the powerless hands
Of a mere child guide it with bit and rein;
One kick would be enough to break the chain,
But the beast fears, and what the child demands
It does; nor its own terror understands,
Confused and stupefied by bugbears vain.
Most wonderful! With its own hand it ties
And gags itself-gives itself death and war
For pence doled out by kings from its own store.
Its own are all things between earth and heaven;
But this it knows not; and if one arise
To tell this truth, it kills him unforgiven.
By Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639)
Translation by John Addington Symonds
More bother from the neighbours today, actually arising out of the actions of the guy downstairs. This shows how reactive urban people are - how they love to form superstitious conspiracies. How they hate. We are a tawdry lot. I think of people I have known. Friends, etc. As far as I can see, they were all annoying control freaks. Compelled by their jealousies of freedom.
I no longer care to change them. I don't expect them to change. It only results in a circular game that gives no progress or life. Like the competition game coming from the guy downstairs, which goes on forever, and it is all in his head, trying to suck me in. Like the circular tussles in the jungle which result less in evolution than in perfection of predator vs prey, through millennia of mass death. Self-referencing. Tautology.
From this stupidity comes the mean world view that life is war. It assumes death to be the overlord. Which it is not. Physicists say that time does not really exist. In so far as time exists, so does death. But, people don't get down to this wisdom, unless it is in a church where everyone kind of has to force themselves to immitate each other, in a reverse tragedy of the commons, thereby approximating the sense of spirituality - en masse. A tawdry lot walking dead like ghosts in their machines.
Like particles, we never get down to the level of freedom of quantum indeterminacy, before the other atoms boxing us in force us to comply to their time and mind. And we are machines again.
A prisoner held in solitary confinement probably will take to smearing his feces on the walls of his cell. Like an animal. A crazy monkey man. He thinks this superstition will somehow free him, his captivity, and so he keeps doing it over and over again, expecting new results every time, when that never happens. He continues his paradoxical learning, stuck in the definition of insanity, not evolving - perhaps even devolving. Going nowhere, he has created religion - or a self-administered placebo effect. That is the sometimes stupid insistence of life. If I see neighbour-fools throwing firecrackers in this direction again, I should tell them this story.
"You know how a locked up prisoner will smear shit all over the walls of his cell? You know why he does that? Because he wants to feel CONTROL. Well - that's what you are doing - this is the same thing. You are throwing firecrackers because you want to experience control - because you have no life otherwise. But it could put you in jail - in solitary confinement. You want to smear shit, or you want to find some better way to control your life? That prisoner had no chance - but you do!"
Well, I now see not too much difference between these sorts of primate behaviours and the control fever of friends and other I have known in the past, though they might decorate their obsessions with money, job titles, churches, FB, and so on. Most everyone is locked in a fear-reactive game they just keep spinning around in and I give up - all I want to do is sleep... You muddy brain freaks...
Born under a bad sign.
Man whips horse to death and Nietzsche goes mad.
Same difference.