[lit-ideas] Re: Aaaaaargh
- From: "Mike Geary" <atlas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:05:34 -0500
AA:
> You don't know and you don't care. Thanks for making that clear.
Well, I do care (in my way), but I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does
anyone -- not definitively. We create narratives to make sense of the world
and we call it History, and some are quite learned narratives, but who can
explain why they themselves do anything they do? You posit "bad parenting" as
the cause of all the evil in the world. And I agree that "bad parenting" often
produces people full of anger and hate and resentment -- but not always -- and
I certainly don't believe that THAT explains the world. We are but fancy,
naked apes. We come into the world knowing only one thing -- how to suckle.
All else is learned. Including the notion that life should not be filled with
violence and strife. Even this notion should be suspect though. As indeed all
notions must be, lacking God's imprimatur. Perhaps this notion is but the
propaganda of the weak, of those kept alive by the strong. Love, tenderness,
kindness -- could these be simply the virtues of losers? Who's to say? Maybe
Nietzsche and Hitler and Bush are right, maybe in the long run destiny belongs
to those who are strong enough to crush the weak and stamp out those who would
nourish 'niceness'. Maybe those whom you think of as good are dragging
humankind down, keeping human progress anchored in sentimentality, delaying the
dawn of Strong Mankind. That's always a possibility, you know. Perhaps your
"bad parents" know a truth that you are ignorant of in your "wouldn't it be
nice" Weltanschauung. Think, Irene, what we could achieve if we could just rid
ourselves of those who drain our resources to no end but their own whiny,
dependent survival.
So, no. I don't know. I just go according to the Weltanschauung I've
inherited.
I don't care that I might be wrong. Don't care that the Hobbesian epithet:
"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" might truly be the case of human
existence because (1) I can't do anything about it if it is, (2) I've found
too much solidarity, too much wealth of wonder, such astonishing kindness, and
overwhelming intelligence to ever be tempted to believe that Hobbesianism could
possibly be the case of the world. However, it does seem a bit short to me,
but I'm sure my grandkids will say: "He lived a long life." I hate the young.
Mike Geary
Memphis
I don't know, but I do care.
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