The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short – (Thomas Hobbes)
I had a quarrel with time. Before time. On time. In time. Past time and late! Too late?
I remember a time where tick & tock argued a minute between kick-off and full-time. Some pretend to live there still. It's play-play.. Other long-livers watch time march across the mirror - a progression around the clock - an early post-supervision spring, the summer blossom of manhood, autumn-grey frosting of wear; and somewhere between winter's wisdom and regret where everyone calls time & gets off. It's a bumbling stagger through the scenes of a SCRIPT we learn in the history books & don't kid yourself, the leash is insidious, gossamer-thin & steely in its resolve.
'Young children really live - the rest exist' (My son Sebastian's school principal).
Cheapen the words. Dismiss the toll as my forties-whatever mid-life crisis (Freudian psycho-babble for tripping backwards on the forgotten freedoms of youth. Then again landing on your arse - teats-up, doesn't endear you much to your daughter's friends, Flash-Gordon or otherwise...)
For the two of us, however, it's becoming more - a resonating, rose-filtered shout at mortality that permeates the garden of our lives; the burr that catches in the craw somewhere deep under the double chin of excess.
As an evolving, social-ape with needs, most land somewhere on or close-to the zero-sum routine, an economic self-serving grab premised on material cannibalism & justified by the perquisites of social position & 'worth'.
It’s classic Game Theory.
Positive-sum theory & the trading in surpluses was 1st brought to the world's notice in Samuel Ricard’s Doux Commerce – 'gentle commerce'. Paraphrased - [... through commerce, society learns to deliberate, to be honest, to acquire manners, to be prudent and reserved in both talk and action]. We call this empathy.
State-control or Hobbes's 'Leviathan' [ie: the Government / Administration] & doux commerce triggers the so-called Civilizing Process; ie: the Script... PR-firms invoice this marketable narrative but delve past the spin and it's a scratch mine if I scratch yours kinda 'empathy'.
If it takes a village to raise a child; it takes the rest of society to abuse one.
TONIGHT some 800 million people will go to bed hungry; a grind of gnawing emptiness that despair doesn’t slake. Many hundreds of millions more sustain themselves on the equivalent of US $1 per diem. Of the US $1 the mean spend on food ranges somewhere between 50 – 75%. That’s US $0.50 – 0.75 per diem. For locals & at the current South African exchange rate, that's the equivalent of circa R 9.50 per diem. Think about that for a second. It's Darwinian to become blinkered in routine & immune to suffering. Yes?
I've used the data, myself, ad nauseum, at four-figured lunches, too often to deny the translation long lost on the y-axis. Over the next mile we'll do our damnedest to walk a while in the data's shoes. That's R 9.50 for each of us; @ least once a week [more?], and for as long as our fat reserves keep us sane..
Treat yourself to the same or at the very least, if anything, concede that life is a deck of cards..
Who knows? The secret to gratitude might reveal itself in the price of brown bread.
I had a quarrel with time. Before time. On time. In time. Past time and late! Too late?
I remember a time where tick & tock argued a minute between kick-off and full-time. Some pretend to live there still. It's play-play.. Other long-livers watch time march across the mirror - a progression around the clock - an early post-supervision spring, the summer blossom of manhood, autumn-grey frosting of wear; and somewhere between winter's wisdom and regret where everyone calls time & gets off. It's a bumbling stagger through the scenes of a SCRIPT we learn in the history books & don't kid yourself, the leash is insidious, gossamer-thin & steely in its resolve.
'Young children really live - the rest exist' (My son Sebastian's school principal).
Cheapen the words. Dismiss the toll as my forties-whatever mid-life crisis (Freudian psycho-babble for tripping backwards on the forgotten freedoms of youth. Then again landing on your arse - teats-up, doesn't endear you much to your daughter's friends, Flash-Gordon or otherwise...)
For the two of us, however, it's becoming more - a resonating, rose-filtered shout at mortality that permeates the garden of our lives; the burr that catches in the craw somewhere deep under the double chin of excess.
As an evolving, social-ape with needs, most land somewhere on or close-to the zero-sum routine, an economic self-serving grab premised on material cannibalism & justified by the perquisites of social position & 'worth'.It’s classic Game Theory.
Positive-sum theory & the trading in surpluses was 1st brought to the world's notice in Samuel Ricard’s Doux Commerce – 'gentle commerce'. Paraphrased - [... through commerce, society learns to deliberate, to be honest, to acquire manners, to be prudent and reserved in both talk and action]. We call this empathy.
State-control or Hobbes's 'Leviathan' [ie: the Government / Administration] & doux commerce triggers the so-called Civilizing Process; ie: the Script... PR-firms invoice this marketable narrative but delve past the spin and it's a scratch mine if I scratch yours kinda 'empathy'.
If it takes a village to raise a child; it takes the rest of society to abuse one.
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| Maropeng Visitor Centre - Cradle of Humankind (South Africa) |
I've used the data, myself, ad nauseum, at four-figured lunches, too often to deny the translation long lost on the y-axis. Over the next mile we'll do our damnedest to walk a while in the data's shoes. That's R 9.50 for each of us; @ least once a week [more?], and for as long as our fat reserves keep us sane..
Treat yourself to the same or at the very least, if anything, concede that life is a deck of cards..
Who knows? The secret to gratitude might reveal itself in the price of brown bread.
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