Subject:

Subject: Re: Bleeding Hearts Pee My Gland

Date: Fri, 12 Sep 1997 15:52:04 GMT

From: lurch@bop.Blercc.HOOOAARGH.excuse me. (RevLurch)

Reply-To: harfs.goinNowheres.com

Organization: FoobaWoobaJohn

Newsgroups: alt.slack

References: 1

>!!!bmyers@ionet.net (TarlaStar) wrote:

>lotsa intelligent stuff<

most of what I write around here is just so much peas-in-a-shell game,

piss-filled squirting flower buttoneer, rubber fried egg on the

breakfast plate semi-malicious nonsense. I mean some of it, sure, but

getting a point across is usually not the point. Being hopelessly

confused and morally ambivalent makes me want to yank the rug out from

under people that only think they aren't. And sometimes I just like to

argue for the fuck of it, and on those occasions it matters not

whether I believe what I'm saying. Anyway. Not that it matters, this

followup is ain't one of those. I've touched on a lot of this before,

but I usually mixed it with a lot of gratuitous snottiness in the hope

someone would flame me. But this is me. Tarla already said a lot of

it, in her way. I'll say it in mine. And this will be the last serious

one a long time. I'm really not getting anywhere. Keep meeting myself

coming around the corner, as they say.

>You know, I've had just about all I can stand of Princess Di and

>Mother Theresa. I'm just more than a little irritated with these

>sanctimonious, knee-jerk assholes who think that because PD and MT did

>charity work that they are somehow "better" than you or I. Fuck that

>shit. It's absolute nonsense.

Yeah. It is. Everybody copes with this sick slaughterhouse in their

own way, but I really do feel that the desire to make life livable for

yourself by making yourself a person you can stand to be around all

the time is the motivation for almost all human behavior. That's not

to say this is bad, but cripes, Viva la Difference. I have no desire

whatsoever to live even ten minutes in a world where everyone lives by

biblical ethics, or even embraces the traditional definition of

humanitarianism. To the people that already do, all I can say for sure

(as I have said way too many times before) is it just ain't as simple

as they think. But don't look to me for answers. I'm still in the

process of slicing away all that I KNOW not to be true in hopes of

finding the right one. And I'm pretty sure I'll croak before I finish.

So why should anything I say interfere with the pious presumptions

about right and wrong essential to the maintenance of their cleanly

contrasted comic book world? No reason at all. And why should I do my

best to, on those occasions when these same presumptions manifest

themselves in flashes of smug, handwringing reprobation of those who

embrace a different fantasy (in their own flawed effort to make sense

of it all) make life a tad more difficult for self-appointed judges

and juries by gleefully rooting out (like a hog after truffles) the

hypocrisy that's nearly always just below the surface? Maybe because

doing so, in my mind, is the right thing to do. Har. Maybe because it

makes me laugh sometimes. And maybe it's just because I REALLY am a

bastard. But I guess that's not for me to judge. We all gotta do what

we think we gotta do.

The individual effort to define, let alone govern one's life with the

consistent application of noble principles has been complicated

enormously here in last two-thirds of the bloodiest century in the

history of mankind. Media exposure, notably TV, exposes us (albeit

from a safe distance) to much more in the way of human suffering than

we are capable of properly processing. Indifference toward the vast

majority of it is a survival mechanism. Any ordinary Westerners that

deny this are deluding themselves, or have actually learned to feel

good about feeling bad, and benefit from the curiously cathartic

crocodile-tears-from-a-safe-distance sort of indulgence that we saw on

a global scale after Lady Di bit the tunnel wall. For my money, I

respect people that up and say they just don't give a shit.

It's funny though, because as I said in a couple posts, for some

curious reason, I felt a little bit crappy after Diana croaked. The

media had managed to get to me a little. I felt like I knew her a

little bit, and felt a little bit sorry for her. She had a name, a

face, and her spooked, waifish, harried and vulnerable look caused me

to feel a twinge or two in spite of my knowing better. Just one life

in a world where thousands have been taken violently since I started

writing this. But she gave us an opportunity for guiltless

psuedo-suffering. Why should we care more for those who have been made

familiar by an industry that wants to sell us a phony world so they

can be flush with income from toothpaste and tire ads? We shouldn't.

And I shouldn't have. But I did. I was manipulated, as I think we all

have been from time to time. We care less for the millions that starve

in Africa than we did for Diana because they remained a nameless,

largely faceless suffering mass, worthly perhaps of a glance and a

cluck and a half-hearted "gee, that's SO terrible" remark tossed off

between bites of Cocoa-Puffs, but then, becuase the legitimate

enjoyment of further suffering would require some sort of ACTION,

thankfully, it is relegated to level of importance in our minds no

where near that of a misplaced 25-cent pen. And folks, I think that's

the way it ought to be. Trying to function day to day in this world

and deal with one's own guilt is hard enough. Accepting blame, and by

extension, responsibility for rectifying apparent evil wrought by our

ancestors, our government, even acts of God, for most of us, unwilling

to leave this life for a refuge camp or the like, is a prescription

for madness. I think it drove Mother Theresa nuts. I'm sorry some get

a raw deal from day one, but not sorry enough to spend my one and only

life up to my ass in reeking, rotting lepers. She, in my mind, had a

powerful delusion that made it all make sense. A firm belief in an

eternal reward that gave her way to cope, (mindless of glaring

contradictions) with a cold and nasty world, and a clear vision of

what she must do. Well, there have been many times that I've envied

folks like that, and there were many times when I would have gladly

sacrificed my rationality to believe those comforting fairy tales,

even if it would require committment to some equally revolting

humanitarian exercise. But I can't. I can only believe what I believe,

and I do that which my nasty rationality compels me to do. And

EVERYBODY, from Jeffrey Daumer to Mother Theresa, possessing as they

do wildy different psyches owing who-knows-what to both hereditary

predisposition and environmental influence, does the same damn thing.

And I will not accept that I do it out of selfishness any more pure

and crystalline than the selfishness that motivates each and everyone

of us. And I refuse to accept such selfishness is bad. We are animals,

and it is perhaps folly to hold ourselves to higher standards than the

other animals, both human and non-human, that we alternately slaughter

and presume to help. Even in this world, suffering as it is from the

eons-long effort to infuse it with oversimplified religious notions,

and the fairly recent floating, selective moral manipulation by the

media, some see the damage potential of setting unreachable goals, and

denying our true natures. No one says wolves should abandon predation

and learn to live on wild rice, and would be laughed at if they did.

But people that would have us ignore thousands of years of

consistently bloody human history and conquest and have us believe

it's perpetrators were aberrations, a small bunch of EVIL men that

duped the rest of us and built this foul world of inequity and

suffering, are still, amazingly, taken seriously. We do what we do

because of what we are. And if a person can't accept that, they should

take it up with whatever diety designed this organism. And if they

don't believe in one, hell, forget it. Kick ass and have a blast,

cause this is all there is. But, expect to hear a lot of howling about

the unfairness of it all from those that are on the other end of the

boot, and those that for their own reasons, feel guilty about the

kicking that has been done on their behalf.

So what can one draw from all of this? That there's no way to define

right and wrong? Not neccessarily. Just that, at least to my way of

thinking, you have to be awfully careful about whose version and

definition you accept. I accept my own, and let it come to me as it

will, and be altered as is neccessary. What is wrong in one situation

is perfectly defensible in another. And the entire process of

deliniation is more properly affected by perception and circumstance

than faulty philosophical absolutes. Like a lot of the stuff we run up

against, the sheer complexity of innate simplicity often leaves us

wide open for those that would sell us a sanitized, neatly ordered,

and utterly bogus way out of thorny ethical dilemmas, and allow us to

abrogate completely whatever responsibilities we as thinking organisms

are born to, in exchange for our skepticism, cynicism and the

capability for hard reckoning that have brought us nothing but pain,

anyway. And, as I said, I really do envy those that can go for it.

But, if we as humans indeed have responsibilities that extend beyond

the Darwinistic prioritizing of that which fosters the well-being of

ourselves, blood relatives and selected acquaintances, even going so

far as to encompass the relative well-being of ALL our fellow bipeds,

I believe we then have an even greater responsibility to the non-human

life forms on this planet which sustain us. But this seems roundly

ignored by the peddlers of most feelgood fantasies, for this is one

case where what's good for the goose is not good for the gander, at

least in the short term.

I am endeavoring to ignore the lot of it, and concentrate on the

sphere where I can have an actual physical impact. The merits of what

I do are for God to judge, if he or she or it is out there. If he

ain't, then who gives a shit? In any case, I don't deny it's important

for me to try to have a good time, and I think it was for MT as well.

Live and let live, eh? Fairly fucking simple and woefully inadequate

as whole-life philosophy goes, but it's about as good as we can do, I

think.

>Lurch is a nasty ole misanthrope, but I know if I came through

I like the nasty and the misanthrope parts, but did ya have to say

old?

>Georgia, I could stay at his place and get a meal as well. He'd

>probably entertain me with tales and wouldn't expect me to accept

>Jesus as my personal savior in order to receive his kindness. I don't

>think Princess Diana or Mother Theresa would do that. I don't think

>that personal interaction and individual kindness or charity is any

>less important or valuable than that given to nameless masses. In

>other words, Lurch is every bit as good as Mother Theresa in my eyes.

>In fact, he's better. He is kind without having to have Jesus as his

>excuse or reward.

urrgle. Okay. Is true. Sorta. Diana looked a lot better than me,

though, although I think I could hold my own with MT. Anyway, I do act

like a bigger jerk than I really am, even though I really am a jerk.

But I have been known to be nice to people. But I'm working on the

character flaw such madness is born of. In the meantime, though, the

stuff Tarla mentioned basically goes, and it goes for all of you, even

the ones I've bickered with. Meg said something a long time ago about

her liking most people individually but disliking them collectively

(hope I got that right), and I always thought it was a fairly apt

description of me, although I'm sure she matches me neither in degree

nor attendant venomous confusion, and I can't honestly say I even like

MOST people that I know personally. But I do like some of them. And I

wouldn't hang around here and insult everybody and be an obnoxious,

arrogant, surly and blackhearted jerk if I didn't sorta like most of

the other people that join me in this twisted, sneering,

nervous-cackling comraderie of desperation. At least we all still seem

to be thinking.

Anyway. Thanks for saying all that. Drop in anytime. But you may get a

rubber fried egg in your breakfast.

Your post was very well-put, as usual.

lurch