Poverty: The Only Thing Money Can

[Al Fish]

Poverty: The Only Thing Money Can’t Buy!

 

 

“…place central importance on the great conflict which is eternally waged between Liberty and Power .... I see the liberty of the individual not only as a great moral good in itself ... but also as the necessary condition for the flowering of all the other goods that mankind cherishes: moral virtue, civilization, the arts and sciences, economic prosperity.”

Conceived in Liberty, Volume II

Murray Newton Rothbard

(1926-1995)

 

 

“While the roaches are thick on the floor/ I settle down to primetime Limbo”

Ita

Cold Chisel

 

 

 

 

Living in an instantaneous age of State sponsored terrorism and media driven apprehensions, is it any wonder people turn to the ‘chemognosis’ of the Most Holy Grass of the Arabs? Some presuppose that ours is the ‘Age of Stunts’. Stunts that are without restraint, maddened by pride, cruelty and heartlessness. Stunts prepared for a deceitful, gluttonous audience. Through an enlightened gaze the easy and practical solutions to world problems become even more self-evident. First the Church then the State has consistently opposed drugs with a vengeance bordering on the pathological. The same is true of sexual expression. Only the degree, obviousness and penalties vary. To err is human. But to persevere in error is theological. There are some very good reasons for this, producing identical human responses - every time. Just look around.

 

 

On the 21st of July, 1913 Franz Kafka observed in his Diary, “Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair”. We exist as robots within a world of no win politics fortified by political structures that have either outgrown their usefulness or graphically and tragically proved their inherent inadequacies. By old religious traditions that subverted a message of denying Church by preaching the personal and interior nature of the Kingdom of Heaven, and the State and family by advocating a higher allegiance to individual conscience continue as unabashed as if nothing had happened at all. And in answer, nothing changes. There is something to be said for ‘turning on, tuning in and dropping out’.

 

Anton La Vey noted that, "There is nothing inherently wrong with fascism, given the nature and needs of the average citizen... Now it's not so much a case of avoiding fascism, but of replacing a screwed up, disjointed, fragmented and stupefying kind of fascism with one that is more sensible and truly progressive." And Anton was many things, but never a fool. He also opined that the best street cleaner was a riot-gun and there are few that would quibble. Turning against ourselves we live alone and vicariously with others. We have allowed ourselves to become prisoners in our own mythological penitentiaries amid the bright-lights and dark corridors of our cheap and nasty psyches. If viewed objectively, Satan does not need to buy souls.

 

You are drip-fed belief systems, pointless choices and hollow opportunities. From radios, televisions, print media, billboards and the accepted agenda of the day, we exist in a constant state of boredom. Fashion experts assist psychopaths in both politics and Big business. Words as empty as the hearts that speak them, hardly affect us any more. Something has pushed us to the side of our own lives. We exist in a universe of suspicion. Our jobs are tenuous; our comatose lives as artificial as our prejudices and our alienated futures mostly short-term.

 

Its not that the true nature of what has and is being offered has changed or wasn’t obvious all along. Just get another beer, turn down the lights, heat your packaged dinner and watch the flat-screen colour and movement of compliant simplicities. Your parents ‘could not think of a number so they gave you a name.’ But the State has assigned you a number for your pettiness and you will work until you drop! Samuel Adams said it best at the Philadelphia State House on the 1st of August, 1776, “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” Nobody listened then either.

 

In rampant consumer societies beliefs are just as mass-produced and disposable as spouses. Thinking hurts, that is why so few do it! Which politician would you be happy to put in charge of your business or assist your family for six months? If God is all-powerful and can do anything can God create a rock too heavy for God to lift? God loves simple people, which is why God creates so many!

 

If individuals began to realise that they should never be their brother’s keeper but only his brother. If as individuals we decided to finish playing the game, stop paying taxes, start earning respect, demanded control of our communities, began to question ourselves and to dream again - looking beyond our own lifetimes…

 

But, Homo sapiens are by nature herd-animals.

 

We believe in the law of the Aeon, which is sacrifice and in the letting of blood. It’s the only doctrine to which we have ever been faithful, that and the aesthetic of disgrace.

 

A disguised post-modern Eugenics rests on the superiority of those who know that they are above ‘the herd’, which they view with revulsion and is reflected in the indignation of their policies for any form of commitment to anything wider than themselves - to the point of trivializing life itself. One wing of the Hospital helps infertile couples; the other unit terminates foetuses. Cloning is not required – as a trip around any Metropolis will prove. The condition of admission is an old school tie, a proper handshake, mobile phone, a credit rating and some proof from the government that you exist.

 

We continue a hallowed tradition of pious fear – both of life and death. We light candles but we never really kiss. It is not hard to find ourselves refracted through the stained glass grotesque caricatures of spirituality, the sound-byte vomit of politics, the mathematical facelessness of plastic statistics or in the quietest moment of the night. Our politics rest on tribalism, our social systems resemble a clique of High School Prefects not an open system where a vote actually means something. Next time you are standing in a queue imagine a world where the government operates everything; where Committee delegates organise everything; where the information is edited, cutting through the lines of least persistence and where equality of outcome ensures the finality of its long-term results. It’s not that hard.

 

Living in a Pythonesque age we note that the definitions, distinctions and conditions of torture are being discussed and rarefied. Deforestation, pollution, species extinction, water shortages and climate change have numbed us to exhaustion. Because the half-life of depleted Uranium is difficult to comprehend or remember, owing to National Security concerns, the inevitability of pre-emptive strikes and the scarcity of other peoples’ resources, in gratuity we turn away. What God can create – man can destroy!

 

We exist in an Age with more promises than perils, more opportunities than obstacles, with better health care, communication and affordability, yet we silently await the Mushroom clouds and for the smells of death to capture the planet like never before. We are as compliant as sheep to the slaughter. Our fears keep us together, huddling and overwhelmed by our prospect of the inevitable. We know what the State will provide – just what it always has, only more so!

 

I have never smoked a weed that reminded me of a politician, but when the air is full of grey clouds the news is full of clowns. Through a constant haze of body sprays, lite humour to augment the diets, set pieces to alleviate tension and weather patterns oozing sex I often pull another cone. And wonder…

[HighRising]

Dig!

 

Al, your writing is sensational, I love hearing your ruminations on the deeper meanings. Your words contain a razor sharp insight that never fails to inspire me and kick start my own creativity.

 

Love your work, and the all too human connection it fosters

 

HR

[highflyer101]

I have never smoked a weed that reminded me of a politician, but when the air is full of grey clouds the news is full of clowns. Through a constant haze of body sprays, lite humour to augment the diets, set pieces to alleviate tension and weather patterns oozing sex I often pull another cone. And wonder…

 

That makes me want to live in the fucking woods with a shotgun and my ladys. I have given up on the "game" a while ago. I want perils. I want obstacles. I want to be human not some vegtable in a dead end job that defines my sad life. I tryed that 2 time and they ended the same way. I just could not be a drone. I want that uncertanty of standing up for my self It can be hard to find individuals with what it takes to think and do for them self, also the goverment activly fights you and your true freedom. Others who play the "game" look at you as a reject or pest or maby just some thing to be swepet under the rug and forgoten. I think... or at least I think I do, and that is what counts.

 

Al Fish