If 'Thank You' Is as near an irreligious society
gets to saying 'Amen' or 'Inshalah' or any other
similar religious expression with any feeling, then sobeit.
The currency of courtesy should never
be so undervalued that we can't find it in us
to use the words because with the hierarchy
we have to speak the words into we have no choice,
now or in future, about where our words place us
we can't change our place in where we live.
Involuntary gratitude always hide humiliation.
When our choice is which autocrat
to take most literally, or disbelieve,
according to the media open to us,
the choice is somewhat rhetorical:
the winner will be the public speaker
whoever can fake sincerity the best,
whilst bluring the edges of gov't consent
being built on clear consulting citizens
is going to be the winner.
But in a world built on entertainment
it will be increasingly the case that politics
remains religion with no interest in the soul,
showbiz for ugly people; vanity is the currency
that waives the rules, in it's inconsistency.
Less because what we are being told
redefines 'doom scrolling' better
than reading the book of Job, whole
and considering the effects on his life
from his listening to so many false comforters,
and more because, well....
What I read most, and wish it were different,
is a few rich men in hyper wealthy America
fighting each other to wrest control over,
an extortionate prostitution charter,
where each of them wants to smear their enemies
with, and keep their own name out of,
as if managing an sextortion racket
was a natural extension of 21st century capitalism.
If only that was the worst of their meanness...
In countries with an open media
politics will always be divided by diversity.
Citizens can use any political label they like
to describe themselves and other people,
though it might help for them to find
a choice of words that does not sound
so defensive as to shut down all argument.
In societies that defend the right
to carry a gun, the distance in thought
from words that can trigger further,
less healthy and more illogical, arguments,
and words that can trigger lethal actions
is shorter than many people discover.
ignoring virtue signalling:
It was a media fad backed up
by a catch phrase where whoever
was sending the signal, the point
was they were not backing it up.
What was more interesting
was the content of the message
that was actually sent, decoupled
from any gussied up 'virtue'.
In this new age of nastiness,
we are getting the opposite
and it is far more dangerous:
vice signalling where the message
implies a real but unspecified threat
where the less accurately
the vice or threat is interpreted
the more lethal the hidden intent
inside the signal becomes
when made impossible to retreat from.
When I was aspiring to be a grown up
in the 1970s the adults whose example
it was left unsaid I should emulate
presented themselves as if they were
born professional adults, who had never
had a childhood and never been anything
other than the apex characters
they presented themselves as
to who they brought into the world.
Whoever they brought into the world
could only ever be amateurish, children,
even when they were capable, well formed, individuals.
I remember feeling repelled
by this locked in professional view
of what parenting ought to produce:
a replication of itself from different circumstances.
Where what parents held onto most
was how amateurish children
would never relive the past
to be anything like them.
