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Tales from the
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“In the world of politics and economics, men routinely tell men they have potential and can do whatever they want and have whatever they want if only they apply themselves. This is the way they talk -- they say ‘potential’ without any kind of qualification, as if unqualified ‘potential’ is automatically a desirable and admirable thing without any equivocation whatsoever -- but what is this potential of which they speak? |
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I never ask what that means. I never want to hear it… but I know what it means. I knew what it meant the first time I heard it. It means never find satisfaction in the ordinary or uneventful. It means pursue the extraordinary even if without purpose or reason, even if you don’t know why. No matter what senseless death, destruction or suffering, do something extraordinary no one will ever forget because anything less is of no consequence and utterly meaningless. This is what they teach children - You are meaningless, worthless and of no consequence until you cause sufficient obscenities to be remembered longer than everyone else. There is no meaning, no judgment to fear, and there are no consequences for your actions. There is significance and there is insignificance, and the thing you should always fear above all other things is insignificance. Who do they think these children will become? What do they think children learn from all that? We can tell a child anything we want and a child will believe anything we say, no matter how obviously implausible… but the more plausible we make it, the longer the child will believe it, and the more experience will reinforce those beliefs. We tell a child an uneventful life is insignificant then we treat everyone with uneventful lives as if they are insignificant and to the child, it is true; it is reality. Perhaps we tell the child men are incapable of doing anything until somebody tells them to do it and gives them money for it afterward, and later, when the child is an adult, nobody tells the adult to do anything or gives the adult any money so the adult just drops over dead of starvation. That happens for real. Real people sometimes drop over dead of starvation just because no one tells them to do anything or gives them any money, and other people around them probably consider all that proof of reality That is how the age of reality will come to an end and next will come the age of fantasy. In the age of fantasy, food possesses no inherent value and the effort to produce it does not count, because food does not grow on trees. Food only grows when people with money pay people to grow food, because money came first; because food is the product of money, not the other way around, and if anything should ever happen to disrupt money and the last of the money should perish, every human on the earth will collapse in a heap and never move again until they all die, because food only grows when people with money pay people to grow food, and when nobody pays anybody to grow food, no food will ever grow again. That is what the last days of humanity are going to look like. The last remnants will die off lying in the shade of apple trees and starve to death while apples fall from the branches and bounce off their heads because they won’t know apples are food if no one pays them money to pick the apples up off the ground… and the last words forever frozen on their dying lips will be, ‘If only we managed the money more wisely… We could have done whatever we wanted and had whatever we wanted if only we had applied ourselves… We had such potential.’ I won’t be around for it but in your years to come, you’ll have far more contact with these people than I ever did. You and I have always been ready to believe all of that, they just didn’t get to us in time while we were still children and now it’s too late because we already know better, but one of these years, they’re going to get an opportunity to tell a next generation they have potential, and then those children are going to starve to death while apples bounce off their heads. Always remember it because that is how the big last war to determine the inheritance of the earth will look. There won’t be a lot of weapons involved and hardly anyone will wear uniforms. Everyone will look and act about the same, and the only way you will ever figure out which ones to kill is by paying real close attention to which ones tell you, you have potential and you need to apply yourself…” |
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(dialogue excerpt from the Other World, by Erdman) |
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