[lit-ideas] Re: Aaaaaargh

  • From: "Andy Amago" <aamago@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:33:58 -0400

Rather than time being the issue, success and how it?s defined is more
likely the problem.  In other words, success is something we do to get
approval from others (read: parents) transferred onto the world at large. 
The flip side of that is, success is retaliating at parents transferred
onto the world at large.  It?s why, not just in my opinion, success is so
often fraught with greed and lowlifey-ness, because success is an
artificial value, superimposed from the outside, and this artificial,
superimposed value is used to fill the emptiness inside.  Additionally,
society also allows only one form of success, and that?s money.  This ultra
narrow straightjacket definition of success is tied up with the illusion of
youth, something that society allows for approximately half of the average
life span.  It?s a struggle not to have depression or some form of
emotional distress in such a warped society - war, gangs, racism, sexism,
child abuse, pollution, exploitation, slavery, drug use and abuse,
including alcohol, clawing one's way up the corporate ladder, etc. etc.

Society doesn't celebrate life.  It celebrates money and it mourns life,
conveniently expressed in all the "over the hill" jokes.  It also helps
explain why war is so eternal, because war celebrates death.  It's an honor
to die for your country, to martyr yourself for a cause, better dead than
red, the only good [injun, commie, etc.] is a dead [injun, commie, etc.],
and on and on.  It's no wonder people drown themselves (pun unintended but
appropriate) in television and escapism.  What else is there to do in a
world that hates life?



> [Original Message]
> From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Date: 9/26/2006 12:34:51 PM
> Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Aaaaaargh
>
>  >>The student will demonstrate an ability to manage time.
>
> That's something they were never big at in Caveman Fireside 
> High School. Consequently I never developed the knack. Now 
> time manages me. The sun rockets across the sky each day and 
> the seasons whirl past like helicopter blades or misfired 
> Roman candles. My beard grays even as I shave it. The bones 
> weaken, the muscles thin, the brain becomes even less acute, 
> new aches arise, and I face the remorseless headlong plunge 
> into personal annihilation and the non-void of no-self. 
> Enfeebled and failing, I face a horror unfolding too fast to 
> fully comprehend. Yeah I coulda used some of that there time 
> management. Some of that time management would be real good 
> 'bout now.
>
> Best,
> Ephemera
>
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