A Proof for Dada's Ragnarok: Vacant truth.

Breaking News! WS Occupiers discover the homeless, whose own occupations of public spaces preceded them! Convergence unlikely due to didactic disparity & the superstitious tenets of self-evident tenants who miss entirely that increasingly, some paedagogs are as well evictees.

However so, 'better-than-thou' itself may soon be on the list of endangered species, this being a matter of natural culling and not culturally concorded selection. While Lamarck would accommodate a change of mind in a single generation (paedogogy outside of institutional apparati), for Darwinian selection to apply, the better-thans would need oft themselves, or fail to attract a mate to reproduce any sort of state. And baby jesus (or was it paul?) said "The decrepid poor (and women and children) will always be with us, so need not be considered, (insipid) in your cristianly dutiful quests and inquisitions: acquisition of unquestioned property and gold pavements lined with good points all correctly collected like spears in formation". This Apollonian swill well-justifies action afore thinking (a central praxis of any axis), eliminating ideation but not ideologs (the difference between thinking and its stoppage, we call 'thoughts').

We can now see the poor are made by warfaring aristo- (or is it poly-)crats and not nature's creation after all. The push and shove for mobility illuminates the absurdity of all standing positions: only gods think they're immortal, all else immoral. Only god's lack the capacity to think things through, opacity in forecasting their own doom in the mirrors of dead enemies. Hence god's must travel with abundant, wraithful wrath to cover their own incontinence. A laural wreath is just a halo providing the illusion that their wars are always between good an evil.

"The “concordance” system arose in the post-war period and was originally designed to incorporate all parties in government, so as not to exclude any part of society. It originated as a typical form of “social partnership” at the end of World War II, [as long as the socialists divested of Marx for to appease surviving nazis, amalgamated pharmaceuticals and their petrolated referees] to defuse the revolutionary struggles of the working class and to integrate the reformists into the system"

– wsws

So like and for the maintenance of any war, the direction of democracy calls for unity. Where there is post-fractious unification, as we see occuring in, for example, Switzerland, that is, the forgiveness of past factitious antagonisms through the formation of a coalition government, such which (and after), that part of democracy generally considered having to do with choice and voting (the enumeration of the probability of a hypothetically consensual concordic) disguised as negotiated settlement (another occupation of sorts) disappears in a pestilence of agreeability and justifiable logic making way for an extrajudicial offing, of't by secret committee. No conspiracy, they just don't like to talk about it lest insurgents come to oust the "occupiers" – a strange name in itself for a resistance, yet "decolonisers" have been voted out as historically constrained and politically inconvenient.

But back to the topic at hand. Like 'all hands to battle stations', Rousseau's social contract, or achieved total consensus actually removes the possibility of choice altogether: you take what is collectively given, and no more, without complaint nor any discord – democracy is supposed to be an unscripted cadre of volunteers working to better humanity (for better or worse, by hook or by crook). A provisional government is only a phrase, or is it a phase, transitional to the establishment of enforcement capabilities, and that is a total controlled situation, nothing provisional about it. Voting can return only in the choicest of punishments per citizens' preference – like guilotine or noose, you choose. It is a marriage. The argument is this: Were ever our civil choices any more than the exercise of illusions?

PARABLE OF GOVERNMENT (STILL THE SAME AFTER 3,000 YEARS)

And now when five days were gone, and the hubbub had settled down, the (seven) conspirators met together to consult about the situation of affairs. At this meeting speeches were made, to which many of the Greeks give no credence, but they were made nevertheless. Otanes recommended that the management of public affairs should be entrusted to the whole nation. “To me,” he said, “it seems advisable, that we should no longer have a single man to rule over us—the rule of one is neither good nor pleasant. Ye cannot have forgotten to what lengths Cambyses went in his haughty tyranny, and the haughtiness of the Magi [wise bureaucrats] ye have yourselves experienced. How indeed is it possible that monarchy should be a well-adjusted thing, when it allows a man to do as he likes without being answerable? Such licence is enough to stir strange and unwonted thoughts in the heart of the worthiest of men. Give a person this power, and straightway his manifold good things puff him up with pride, while envy is so natural to human kind that it cannot but arise in him. But pride and envy together include all wickedness—both of them leading on to deeds of savage violence. True it is that kings, possessing as they do all that heart can desire, ought to be void of envy; but the contrary is seen in their conduct towards the citizens. They are jealous of the most virtuous among their subjects, and wish their death; while they take delight in the meanest and basest, being ever ready to listen to the tales of slanderers. A king, besides, is beyond all other men inconsistent with himself. Pay him court in moderation, and he is angry because you do not show him more profound respect—show him profound respect, and he is offended again, because (as he says) you fawn on him. But the worst of all is, that he sets aside the laws of the land, puts men to death without trial, and subjects women to violence. The rule of the many, on the other hand, has, in the first place, the fairest of names, to wit, isonomy; and further it is free from all those outrages which a king is wont to commit. There, places are given by lot, the magistrate is answerable for what he does, and measures rest with the commonalty. I vote, therefore, that we do away with monarchy, and raise the people to power. For the people are all in all.”

Such were the sentiments of Otanes. Megabyzus spoke next, and advised the setting up of an oligarchy:—“In all that Otanes has said to persuade you to put down monarchy,” he observed, “I fully concur; but his recommendation that we should call the people to power seems to me not the best advice. For there is nothing so void of understanding, nothing so full of wantonness, as the unwieldy rabble. It were folly not to be borne, for men, while seeking to escape the wantonness of a tyrant, to give themselves up to the wantonness of a rude unbridled mob. The tyrant, in all his doings, at least knows what is he about, but a mob is altogether devoid of knowledge; for how should there be any knowledge in a rabble, untaught, and with no natural sense of what is right and fit? It rushes wildly into state affairs with all the fury of a stream swollen in the winter, and confuses everything. Let the enemies of the Persians be ruled by democracies; but let us choose out from the citizens a certain number of the worthiest, and put the government into their hands. For thus both we ourselves shall be among the governors, and power being entrusted to the best men, it is likely that the best counsels will prevail in the state.”

This was the advice which Megabyzus gave, and after him Darius came forward, and spoke as follows:—“All that Megabyzus said against democracy was well said, I think; but about oligarchy he did not speak advisedly; for take these three forms of government—democracy, oligarchy, and monarchy—and let them each be at their best, I maintain that monarchy far surpasses the other two. What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state? The counsels of such a man are like himself, and so he governs the mass of the people to their heart’s content; while at the same time his measures against evil-doers are kept more secret than in other states. Contrariwise, in oligarchies, where men vie with each other in the service of the commonwealth, fierce enmities are apt to arise between man and man, each wishing to be leader, and to carry his own measures; whence violent quarrels come, which lead to open strife, often ending in bloodshed. Then monarchy is sure to follow; and this too shows how far that rule surpasses all others. Again, in a democracy, it is impossible but that there will be malpractices: these malpractices, however, do not lead to enmities, but to close friendships, which are formed among those engaged in them, who must hold well together to carry on their villainies. And so things go on until a man stands forth as champion of the commonalty, and puts down the evil-doers. Straightway the author of so great a service is admired by all, and from being admired soon comes to be appointed king; so that here too it is plain that monarchy is the best government. Lastly, to sum up all in a word, whence, I ask, was it that we got the freedom which we enjoy?—did democracy give it us, or oligarchy, or a monarch? As a single man recovered our freedom for us, my sentence is that we keep to the rule of one. Even apart from this, we ought not to change the laws of our forefathers when they work fairly; for to do so is not well.”

Such were the three opinions brought forward at this meeting; the four other Persians voted in favour of the last. Otanes, who wished to give his countrymen a democracy, when he found the decision against him, arose a second time, and spoke thus before the assembly:—“Brother conspirators, it is plain that the king who is to be chosen will be one of ourselves, whether we make the choice by casting lots for the prize, or by letting the people decide which of us they will have to rule over them, in or any other way. Now, as I have neither a mind to rule nor to be ruled, I shall not enter the lists with you in this matter. I withdraw, however, on one condition—none of you shall claim to exercise rule over me or my seed for ever.” The six agreed to these terms, and Otanes withdraw and stood aloof from the contest. And still to this day the family of Otanes continues to be the only free family in Persia; those who belong to it submit to the rule of the king only so far as they themselves choose; they are bound, however, to observe the laws of the land like the other Persians.

After this the six took counsel together, as to the fairest way of setting up a king: and first, with respect to Otanes, they resolved, that if any of their own number got the kingdom, Otanes and his seed after him should receive year by year, as a mark of special honour, a Median robe, and all such other gifts as are accounted the most honourable in Persia. And these they resolved to give him, because he was the man who first planned the outbreak, and who brought the seven together. These privileges, therefore, were assigned specially to Otanes. The following were made common to them all:—It was to be free to each, whenever he pleased, to enter the palace unannounced, unless the king were in the company of one of his wives; and the king was to be bound to marry into no family excepting those of the conspirators. Concerning the appointment of a king, the resolve to which they came was the following:—They would ride out together next morning into the skirts of the city, and he whose steed first neighed after the sun was up should have the kingdom.

Now Darius had a groom, a sharp-witted knave, called Oebares. After the meeting had broken up, Darius sent for him, and said, “Oebares, this is the way in which the king is to be chosen—we are to mount our horses, and the man whose horse first neighs after the sun is up is to have the kingdom. If then you have any cleverness, contrive a plan whereby the prize may fall to us, and not go to another.” “Truly, master,” Oebares answered, “if it depends on this whether thou shalt be king or no, set thine heart at ease, and fear nothing: I have a charm which is sure not to fail.” “If thou hast really aught of the kind,” said Darius, “hasten to get it ready. The matter does not brook delay, for the trial is to be to-morrow.” So Oebares when he heard that, did as follows:—When night came, he took one of the mares, the chief favourite of the horse which Darius rode, and tethering it in the suburb, brought his master’s horse to the place; then, after leading him round and round the mare several times, nearer and nearer at each circuit, he ended by letting them come together.

And now, when the morning broke, the six Persians, according to agreement, met together on horseback, and rode out to the suburb. As they went along they neared the spot where the mare was tethered the night before, whereupon the horse of Darius sprang forward and neighed. just at the same time, though the sky was clear and bright, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a thunderclap. It seemed as if the heavens conspired with Darius, and hereby inaugurated him king: so the five other nobles leaped with one accord from their steeds, and bowed down before him and owned him for their king. [...] Thus was Darius, son of Hystaspes, appointed king.

– Herodotus

– see also The Tipping Point, Critical Mass & The Avant Garde

WHY THEN, ANY GOVERNMENT WHEN...

Brothers strike brothers and both shall fall,
Sisters' sons, their kin will defile.
Ages of axes and swords, shields are riven,
A wind-age, a wolf-age till the world's in ruin.
Evil and ages of whoredom are earthly,
No one to another shall show any mercy.

– Voluspa

Isn't it about time "Thor [the smith who becomes a war god] kills Jörmungandr [the great under-worm who lives off the dead and nibbles on the roots of the life tree], yet is poisoned by the serpent, and manages to walk nine steps before falling to the earth dead. Fenrir swallows Odin, killing Odin, though immediately afterward Odin's son Víðarr kicks his foot into Fenrir's lower jaw, grips Fenrir's upper jaw, and rips apart Fenrir's mouth, killing Fenrir. Loki fights Heimdallr, and the two kill one another. Surtr covers the earth in fire, causing the entire world to burn." (– wiki). Or maybe we can persuade the do-gooding gods to leave us be or leap from their clouds? We like the ground ... is that so unsound? Do what thou wil't, yes, but be mindful of your not inconsiderable consequents: The Ragnarok has happened before, and will without doubt be soon to recur.

Whatever gods you worship, you realize that they are your gods, the product of your own mind, terrible or amiable, as you may choose to depict them. You hold them in your hand, and play with them, as a child with its paper dolls; for you have learned not to fear them, that they are but the “imaginations of your heart.”

All the ideals which people generally think are realities, you have learned to see through; you have learned that they are your ideals. Whether you have originated them, which is unlikely, or have accepted somebody else's ideals, makes no difference. They are your ideals just so far as you accept them. The priest is reverend only so far as you reverence him. If you cease to reverence him, he is no longer reverend for you. You have power to make and unmake priests as easily as you can make and unmake gods. You are the one of whom the poet tells, who stands unmoved, though the universe falls in fragments about you.

– John Beverley Robinson

After a time of decay comes the turning point. The robust life that has been banished returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force... The movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the transformation of the old becomes easy. The old is discarded and the new is introduced. Both measures accord with the time; therefore no harm results.

– I Ching

'Imperial Constabulary' or 'Black Magic'?

Or is ICBM just short for
"I see shit!" – no less nor more?
For as without an aesthetick
Is 'just', as mediocritick
Alone, another blanken'd script:

For money b’ing the common scale
Of things by measure, weight, and tale,
In all th’ affairs of Church and State,
’Tis both the balance and the weight;

– Hudibras, ca 1660

"As the Devil is the Spiritual Prince of Darkness, so is the Constable the Secular, who governs the night with as great authority as his colleague, but far more imperiously."

– Hudibras' translator, ca 1805

An oath's but promise to the futures,
(not curse nor spell – they're only wagers).
But Troth relinquish't all around,
as to relig'n on any ground,
for magick tricks win all hands down.

[imperious: arrogant, haughty and domineering – Mid-16th century. < H. Potter's Grammatoire: Imperiosus! < L.: imperium (see empire)]

– More

Little Evi gives the Boss an Apple – or – the more things change, the more they stay the same

"Who mothered James Joyce? Beyond a doubt it was Lewis Carrol despite the dissimilitudes between Alice and young Künstler Dedalus who must never learn to fly."

– John 'Swifty' Heusamen

Of course, and just like x-mass presents, most punishments handed out to juvenile offenders exhibit little protective concern with biting snakes or other environmental dangers, but on the contrary, are distributed for bringing harmless bits of it, the outside, inside, tracking all over the house just like melted crayons on a dirt floor end up writing on the wall. There are also the more material matters of oral experimentation with bugs in rugs, spitting up pottage in the cottage or vocalising famine or the discomfortures of excrement, confined in their britches designed to hold more before leakage – like speaking out of turn, disrespect for schedules (not to mention elders and their conveniently fragile properties: begotten and forgotten goods not immune to breakage) – wandering attention, curious distraction, acquiring tastes, trying to make some sense of it. Were it not for the subtly forged internment of morality into budding bodies (guilting themselves for that very internalisation), it would seem their sanctions are truely random. Then we hear again from the considerate factions:

'but we are only providing necessary tools for coping in a cruel world'

...where allowance is always contingent upon one's performance of chores or others' expectations, not excluding sycophantic, but hypoactive parroting after primary minions of the principals of education, never good enough, peeling away onion skins till ought is left inside, not even a mouse nor her opinion. No dirty rat with stealth and guile, a bird by any other name should ask politely for crackers, remembering always that government is just a kindly father (or a pack) armed with the latest in pesticidal protection (safeguarding Roy from rexicide) and never merely a racket.

Folk etymology kindly finds relations for orphaned words: geneological 'truth' is played down to the ascending hospitality of genies.

One difference between the kind of anarchist groups I like and the classic Marxist group, for instance, is that we don’t start by defining reality – our points of unity are not our analyses of the situation, but rather what we want to do, the action we want to take, and how we go about it. Plus you have to give one another the benefit of the doubt. One of the principles of the consensus process is that you can’t challenge anyone on their motives; you have to assume that everyone is being honest and has good intentions. Not because you necessarily think it’s true, but as an extension of what might be considered the fundamental anarchist insight: if you treat people like children they will tend to act like children. If you treat them like adults, there’s at least some chance they will act responsibly. Ironically, I found this habit of generosity, this giving people the benefit of the doubt, was the exact opposite of the way I was taught to argue as a scholar.

– David Graeber

Well, young master Græber, it becomes more clearly while certain youthful bs-detectors flash red and blue crossing lines when you speak of consensual decromancy, err, demoncracy, decrymentics, whatever. (Many rather prefer anthelmintics). It would almost seem like you have no great fondness for children (except perhaps, those who behave like adults never do – but think ought: backs straight, hands on lap, an attentive stare well avoiding the window, sill and clock beaming bleached teeth like a synchronised swimmer).

Have you not noticed that "adult" and "civilised" and "responsible" (surely, an allusion to debt!) have nearly always been spun interchangeably, particularly by well-intensioned, that is, seriously tightened authorities like screws who know best our needs and are here to proclaim and then provide them, or their outspoken delegates casting forth persuasive serial lines to grab hold, mouth-to-mouth, for our own salvation and hegemony in the perfect image of post-pubescent facial growths ready to plop all over the mirror with a symetrically ascending twist? Or that adult committees and their forward clamations, invocations and otherwise blinding promissory oaths are most typically themselves irresponsible, argumentative, self-imposing and in fact, hypopostumously contradictory crates providing valid dictorian models to be built but never practiced? Could it be that the kind of anarchist groups you really like are in fact not adultish at all?

My suggestion for a correction would follow thus:

if you give treats to people like children, they will tend to act as children do, following your every move until distracted by a bug or two, then remember fondly when sharing new-found gifts with friends who may later seek you out for no predictable agenda or foul motive beyond a shy but generous greeting or presentation of a frog or shiny marble before running off. If treat them like adults you do or as adults do you, there’s at least some chance they will act justly, responsibly or reciprocally, taking what else you'd be carrying before returning abash on your pate, with interest, or selling it "cut-rate" to accomplices for the win.

Do such responsible adults actually frolic in their partisan ensembles? Who else could play with boxed assemblies but the young or impish-minded having ripped apart the packaging for a brief sparkle of joy, or secret glimpse of adrenalin shot therein, hoping their own constraint won't follow soon but are too imbued with moments to keep quiet and still? Would I, for instance, be welcomely categorised, that is, invited down at the forum feast for a peaceful uprising or refereed to a flaming dumbster for wrongspeak?

honestly,
– Peter Pan

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world inside of a leather cup. But all his sexless patients, they're trying to blow it up. Now his nurse, some local loser, she's in charge of the cyanide hole, and she also keeps the cards that read "Have Mercy on His Soul". They all play on penny whistles. You can hear them blow if you lean your head out far enough from Fremont Avenue

Across the street they've nailed the curtains. They're getting ready for the feast. The Phantom of the Opera in a perfect image of a priest. They're spoonfeeding Casanova to get him to feel more assured. Then they'll kill him with self-confidence after poisoning him with words and the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls "Get outa here if you don't know Casanova is just being punished for going to Fremont Avenue".

Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out and round up everyone that knows more than they do. Then they bring them to the factory where the heart-attack machine is strapped across their shoulders and then the kerosene is brought down from the castles by insurance men who go check to see that nobody is escaping to Fremont Avenue.

Praise be to Nero's Neptune, the Titanic sails at dawn and everybody's shouting "Which Side Are You On?" And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, fighting in the captain's tower while calypso singers laugh at them and fishermen hold flowers between the windows of the sea where lovely mermaids flew, and nobody has to think too much about Fremont Avenue.

– Robert (bobby) Zimmerman, Seattle '71

On The Immorality of Cannibalism

The intervention by chance is a random distribution so respects no hierarchic arrangement; nor does it obey laws, being itself the motivator (or kindred to a mother) of probability. It is called forth or cast out with uncertainty, and navigated with aesthhetic rudders, which is to say, taste.

Coined by the dysphasic serial killer, Columbus, confusing local Indians with the descendants of those under the "subjugation" of Ghengis Kahn (thinking Columbus' own floating caravan had docked in Asia), and calling forth supporting evidence that their own term for "human", which is to say "themselves" sounded like "Karenina" (– > "Caribban"), not to mention a rhyme with Hannibal, "Cannibal" has stuck as the common word for man-eaters, joining up with tigers and women in the imperial British, patriarchal jargon by the 19th and early 20th centuries, always on analogy with Caliban and Prospero in proper Hegellian Shakespeares. Interesting that once he had found his bearings, and on further discovery that the natives weren't even human, he invited them to a barbeque to feed his hungry troops (some of whom may well have been Hungarian Huns or their descendants).

There is still some confusion whether -bal refers to the distribution or consumption of food, raw or cooked and in or out of a bowl or cauldron, so is a suitable synonym for phagous which also describes eating or sharing with gusto – even haggis. The ban is antimetabole, against turning abouts, carnivals, change-overs or merely loose change applied to meals, generalised dysphagia being fundamental to the growth of modern economies.

Less confusion is encountered on entering the kingdoms of plants, where both wild and domestic inhabitants are both anthropophagic (hence the abundance of lilies in cemeteries) and homophagic, consuming their own withered body parts, particularly their hand-like leaves quickly cooked in acidic soils, direct from the dirty floor beneath them. Were it not for the nurturing taste experienced by one and all, we might be tempted, getting at the root of things, to suggest auto-exploitation of the top by the bottom (or head by stern) and cry out "Cut out their hearts and eat them alive!", but we now know that they have none ... just over-rigid rudders & tight-assed tiller-men, inviting nothing, except perhaps tempestuous seas.

IMAGE OF A SNEEZE
boogers, scabs, toe-nails and budless neoplastic duds
are best excised with blunt blades or promontory thuds.
'f not swallowed outright,
the maximal obtuse angle's a flat-line
(like a squished nasal polyp billowing dandelion)
seeds everywhere clear, and clean out of sight:

“Sanity is the lot of those who are most obtuse [blunt, or with one internal angle greater than 90º or 75-99%], for lucidity destroys one's equilibrium: it is unhealthy to honestly endure the labors of the mind which incessantly contradict what they have just established.”

– Georges Bataille

Neoplasm is ambiguous

Unlike the oath, promise, swear or duty, the curse acknowleges that sometimes the magic doesn't work, whereon it's rendered 'wishfull thinking' – a proposition which cannot be made legally binding but is, never-the-less, only a contract with possibility. Sometimes the magic needs a little push or self-fulfilling prophecy.

A kindred curse for christians is "May you find truth in all your beliefs", should one wish to void heaven or set the globe on fire and grind stone before descending.

Anaplexy is an ascending twist like a slinky spring well before coming down the stairs, a figure skater leaping from a spin, the reverse image of the cataplexic fall or a wriggling miscarriage – a rigid slunk in the winter. A relaxed spring moves no pinballs toward their confusing, cataleptic destination in ticking points for the win.

The root, also glossed "plastic", used to refer to a maleable material – hence "pliable" – suitable for twisting or braiding, such as steamed wood or raw vine or strips of hemp-stem. Spun wool would also suffice, but not 1.) exceptionally well, which is too 2.) to say "rotten" for basketry or rattan furniture. The new twist or neoplasm rendered of plastic, while still organic due to its carbon base, is considered fakery in the arts, a rare (or quickly cooked) oil derivitive made to resemble something naturally growing and readily collectable. All displays are now cancerous, being digitised in the microwave bandage.

Plainspeak (like rare meat or quickly cooked books) is the democratisation of language, imposed by neglect or favoured flavour for fashion (spartanly paid but never tartanly plaid), and chief anti-cancer drug. Plainspeak is a syringe like the ring of power to cure all lines of thinking from meandering off the mainline and into the blank space between the inkspots on the page, the territory of questionable associations and neoplastic growths away from the compliant followers of lines marching across the page like fascist blackshirts in an italian parade or their brown-shirted cousins to the north hypoventilating at a regemented rally. Too many words have the same destructive effect on mainstream acu(r)ity as a single neo-logism or lexical carcinogen. "Acalculia" is a medical condition where-in every stone is left unturned and differences are polished smooth to bring the appearance of a sterile background, after-which every spell-check identifies "aculeate" with "acolyte" ... No question about it, the short answer suffices for nothing but an abbreviated R.I.P. in the brainpan.

On the other hand and taken literally, thought is merely the past tense of think, a verb (in spite of the similarity to lisping sots sinking boats), putting thoughts in the same bag as recollection, hear-say and other ambiguous artifacts – inappropriate evidence in any court of law or review by your peers. Association with a difference, especially a provisional one, is way out-of-line behavior. No bearing on originality, there are no facts in art to be dug up to impend your off-line case: live art is only a performance, the provision is what you eat. Depending stops clocks when the swinging pendulum is held tight or bearings roughed up.

The talk & the walk: outlaw, anarchist, punishment

The question has been posed such and so that it now nearly saturates the space-time continuum: "What is the factor or set of conditions most responsible for the persistently marching, generational reproduction of the political economy – its enduring invariance?" Beyond the renewing fetish for those famous last words, political & economy, jammed together or standing alone in the common lexicon, there seems a common practice seen throughout time regarding civilisation, at least the modern variety, and that is the delivery of punishment. It is well enough practiced as to appear biologically instinctive (in fact, most will argue to the point of blows that it is!)

I am not attempting a reductive argument as much as presenting a case for consideration. The addendum, "more-or-less" always seems to apply to our attempts at clear and precise calculations of responsibility. Odds-makers depend on it (the fudge factor of chance or the fuzzy logic of uncertainty) before any wager is placed. Chances are the world is too complex for any other sort of argumentative joke, even if infinite or accelerating complexity is thought the direction of chaos or just an order run amock and in need of some imposed simplification and slowdown, if not a kick in the ass so it will fly straight. It is the complexity of every situation which leads many to advise a lazy fair of doing nothing, as our agency has more-or-less run out of steam (or currency, or oil, not even to speak of breathable air). Well, a fair sounds like an enticing proposition, if it's free and not too borig.

And by punishment, I am not referring to violence per se, which is prevalent enough and quite appropriate on any ground as an altruistic as well as egoistic defense mechanism (should we choose to eliminate sacrifice from the equation – autonomous (unmotivated) violence, "just for the heck of it", appears to only rarely occur despite all the fashion-setting advertisements promoting it), but 'just' or juridical punishment required to maintain any prohibitive or proscriptive law. The common theory is that if not punished, more folks will 'do it' more often. This is not cutting-edge logic but the extension of a superstitious belief in innate untrustworthiness (which, oddly enough, never applies to one's self), and then we are advised: "Control yourself!", an impossible contradiction which would render all police to an extinct breed and end civilisation right there and then. Hence, everyday spectacle must be new and improved so we are all potentially caught unawares, equal under the law.

So justice is not possible without a tit-for-tat sanction, its threat or a moral plea to the prudent public which may apply the evil eye until you've paid your dues and walk the talk. Like any wage, the reward is just the threat of punishment, a "withholding": "Do your chores or there'll be no supper!" Economists measure situations and provide the exchange rate; political justice declares the sentence and applies the ankle weight. All governments endorse checks and balances or weights and measures and then say "It's only fair!" By any sophistry, the pronouncement is a foregone conclusion: that is the protection delivered by law (a legislator's carreer depends on it).

While consequences are to be found at each turn or stoppage in any life, their selection and imposition by the select is totally artificial. There are just too many variables to predict, and poignant moments may arouse one's various feelings in any fashion, but most particularly when unexpected. In other words, all circumstances are mitigating, so rather than the recapitulation of an invariable law of nature, every delivered punishment reflects an act of faith, most commonly directed at 'ignorance' (the "young & uneducated") and error (poor work performance justifying a meritocracy of fashionable techno-fascists). Justice is an economic religion, and organised along the same lines, not even excluding black robes and writ rites adorned by the priesthood. What child would exclaim "It's just not fair!" if s/he didn't already suspect some crookery was the case?

Fairness is not generalised from environmental contingencies until one has experienced the emotionally scalding scold, the swat and unremitting surveillance on a daily basis (the unrelenting, random punishment is even more effective). Otherwise, "fair" is an aesthetic description ranging from favourable mediocrity to smoothly excellent: "The pun was fair but not so as the lady's hair". In the same way, a fair is a favourable feast roughly covering the same range, but interspersed with surprises. "Just" is mediocrity without aesthetic.

If there are any "engrams", they are engrained at the earliest moments, well before any speech is more than experimental babble. For a small child, the opened safety-pin or withheld teat is mightier than the writ opinion & its penciled points. This reverses as one ages. From where else is a trust to emerge? The pun, on the other hand should be something to laugh over, not to instill the pain of perpetual guilt or prolong a reactionary tantrum.

The broader question for outlaws and anarchists should be, "Can a young being in the process of becoming older survive without punishment and its singular or mass distributivity?" But who considers children anyway? Do any architects have any children in mind when they design our living spaces ripe with steak-knives and power sockets? It is a fact, if anything is, that the modern environment is brutal and dangerous for growing people, requiring increased attention (ostensibly a matter of tending or nurture and protection) should their survival be deemed a "good" thing. We may hear "I trust my kid but not the environment" and sense an enlightened consideration. Easier by far to acquire a plastic pen and a firm hand or screeching declaration with sharp edges for the times they escape it, a bed with bars and a padded cell for retirement in preparation for (or completion of) a life of institutionalisation (prison prior to transgression makes, on release, just about any shit look shiny) than pick up our own mess and flush it, which is to say, "make it accesable & safe rather than confined & constrained". Doing little to prevent its rehabilitation and parole, it may not be enough to merely set fire to the schoolhouse.

Bucket-Mouth: The epistemology of Generals & Saints

1

Not always necessary, playful (and occasionally, painful) improvisation is the mother of invention, perhaps thereafter, mothering necessity in a viscous cycle. Mimicry is the mother of diffusion and error of modification. The boot (or boat or butter or bucket) is the mother of distributivity (slickum, suave, salve & save), hence the common senses implied by "bucket-mouth", "shit-talk" and "slippery tongue".

2

Generalities cannot be defined (hence the logic of unquestionable chains of command), lest they become specified and generally cease to exist. We would then have to say "There are no generalities", a proper generalisation and a bit of arrogance, so proving ourselves liars or numbskulls, yet another box of abstractions. Safer to suggest "There are no specifics" than generalise from species to genera. Dissection is of course, the reverse of this process, a return trip to the same sticky bog we affectionately call "home on the range" (while incessantly trying to escape). I have heard a mule recently came into the family way. That we've long observed a coyote breed succesfully with Saint Bernard upsets the calm of specification like a wind-storm at sea when rowing a wobbly bucket. Intransigence at this point produces racism. For the greater good of the species, Benard must defeat the Trickster to save the lost mountaineer with a flask of brandy just as George, patron of Bohemians, did it to the dragon after gimpy Patrick had chased all the snakes from Ireland with his cane and women were no longer charming.

3

From an infant's view, the paleolithic diet eliminates the necessity of bottles and buckets without insult to invention and distribution, but only as long as post-weaners are still encouraged to play and mimicry is recognised as a round of mutual entertainment (or intertwinement). The big break at puberty is no negation of childhood but the extension of adventure into more foreign fortune. Prodigality is only applicable when news is returned from strange lands with such interest that all else is forgotten, when tears of loss magically turn to joy. Such was the superstition of the dark ages and grounds for yokes, stocks and flammable annihilation while at their posts, and spectators and torchbearers shouted the war cry: "Jesus saves from all infantile disorder!" and sin took on an entirely new meaning, for which Louis Pasteur invented the cure and today, micro-waves kill enzymes for improved distribution at the expense of metabolism. After all, the rapid delivery of news is money in the bank, while digestion is just the destruction of commodities and injurious to the general economy.

4

If superstition is the pessimistic belief that humans require alien or supernatural intervention (higher power in both senses) for any judgment of accomplishment (or value), how is political economy any progressive superssession of the old by the new? Let me then suggest that prior to state and theocratic intervention, society was without superstition, except in its etymological sense of climbing a hill to get a bigger picture or merely to see what's on the other side.

Shit & Shinola II

The idea, the particular state of existence conceived as stationary, corresponds to any one of the various places in which the moving body is conceived to stand successively; but just as the moving body never stands in any of these places, so man, or any other progressive being, never is in any of the states represented by our ideas – he is only passing through them.

But the image is a gesture, a stoppage (or potential for such when it is a landmark) and not an idea or its representation. An idea is something we like to say "flows" (at least when we refer to thinking). Sometimes it meanders, yet we call that fantasy – figmentary imagination (or mental diarrhea – see fig syrup, figure 1.) when we prefer static "thoughts" (like theories – but think how increasingly often bubbles and light-bulbs burst) to their posited or questionable associations. Interesting that at one time, for the early (or purist) empirical scientist, the quest was the first order of business prior to any theoretical narrative. Now the quest is out of the question: we know ahead of time what we are looking for, so we're sure to find it, one way or another. Fudge is recommended over any fig syrup.

The motion picture is a story (a series of gestures) in which images replace words. A moving landscape is considered more "life-like" than a stationary back-drop. If representation (in or out of the democratic sense) is considered a synonym for life-like, then it is a matter of moving mimicry and not creative (original) at all. Progress beyond silent was considered a "talky" where the image accompanies the spoken word, but unlike stage-theatre, silent films also contained words: written ones, for the eyes rather than ears. These more efficient "silent-screen" actors no longer needed to attend speech therapy, considered the first order of business on the stage. Like the stage, gestures had been caricatured to accentuate the word with visual nuance. Progress sent this modern efficiency to the unemployment lines and actors again needed to learn to talk. Consider the difference between a relaxed and a tense open-mouth stare displayed by a hamadryas baboon. If you're not well-versed in baboon, it might be best all around to back off. Provisional algorythms are cheaper than ideas when the probability of correctness is uncertain.

Consider the "evil eye", raised eye-brow, raised bible, the middle finger, the threatening stance or bared teeth prior to pouncing. These are a pause in motion, signs possibly broadcasting an intention or emotion, but the idea is found not in their construction (a negation of doing) but their interpretation by onlookers. The idea is, like any theory or thought, only a guess; the gesture is poetry. This is why thinking-about-thinking so often utilises navigational metaphors when proceeding to talking-about-thinking.

Everything is genuine and original, whilst on the other hand (and simultaneously), everything is contrived and derived. This is neither contradiction nor enigma where, in a language, there is a word for dada.

– Polyglot Institute: 3rd course on self-mismanaged systems

Shit & Shinola: another offensive spin-off, another repeat:

And what was the theme of yesterday's show beyond a repeat of mindful but inarticulate gibberish? It is always the same theme, or variant tangential to it: Those who would be diagnosed and committed for obsessive-compulsive disorder (once called a "hobby") are not calling for a second opinion – we are in full agreement, being compelled by some unknown quirk of our disposition we like to call "our own, sole, soul pleasure" (which is why we would share it in the first place, being alive and of reproductive age – by one aesthetic or another – genes aren't everything!) to obsessively dis the current order of things, or at least disregard the opinion & belief that the meddlesome arranging for an orderly (regimented) display, which is detrimental to our harmony, is desirable. We actually like a surprise now and then, if only to stay awake. If civilisation is an obsessive compulsion in the pursuit of predictable order, particularly the law-&-order variety (either "natural" or imposed), then civilisation is a narcoleptic murder by definition and not just for eating (unless it is considered top-down ritual cannibalism, the unique perspective of class consciousness).

If civil order (and if we are greek descendants, we would be correct to call it "politics") progresses by murder and mayhem (either literally or symbolically, inward- or outwardly) applied to the different (or easily targeted), then all those, even so-called anarchists bent on its improvement when they are not trying to wind their new digital watches, those who call for its sustainable upgrade are complicit, accomplice or merely compliant. The proper insult is either "Monkey see, monkey do" or a gifted present of the on-screen image portraying three monkeys seeing, hearing and speaking no evil ... or both. It may be considered a mirror or a telescope, that is for you to decide. If you don't like the show, leave the theatre.

Another common insult is "hypocrite", but that is a misapplied attribute as there may be no intention to deceive. There may, in fact, be no intention at all: "we just want to be loved". In any event, such motherless orphans are usually paid for their service (or at least avoid more punishment). When confronted, we hear "It's necessary work for the greater good, and if only everyone engaged in the performance, we could spend less over-all time doing it". "Doing it!" Well, I say that sounds like aphroditicly scrubbing on a stranger's toilet after (or prior to) a bad bout of dysentery or projectile vomiting. When something is so well rehearsed, it is highly unlikely that any withering will be observed in the audience. If it is an offensive display, where will you get volunteers except from like-minded fetishists? More successful applicants for the part always adds up to more misery (expressed in man-hours) and not less. But of course, it's just theatre and you can go home after the show! Or can you?