Reduced Individuality Through Suffering Is Rarely What It Seems

One of the troubling paradoxes of modern life
is that to illustrate modern suffering well enough
it has to be rendered as a brief and well told story
about an individual as presented by mass media.

By the time the story appears it is aided
by a Greek chorus of mildly stricken relatives.
then an over competitive media reduces the original story
to 'grieving relative hits out' and otherwise makes out
that the experience is atypical from the norm.

To varying degrees, suffering is the common experience.
And when the stories we tell so easily misrepresent us
the more honest path will be a silent misanthropy..... 

Where There Is Life

there is always both sloth and avarice,
but where the sloth can make greed
work so slowly as make greed open weakness,
then each vice cancels out the power of the other.
Not that either can be the source of  purposeful generosity. 

This My Future Employer

And my past employer too. When I tried to work
for money the good will was worth less then the wage
and neither supported me in  the way they said they would.

A Choice Of Absent Government

I was chatting with a friend recently,
and explained that I might be absent
from them for a while-the government
had some forms that it needed me to fill in,
and further, it might well want
to interview me at some length.

My friend replied 
'You do know the government is in chaos?'.
It was only later the same day that I realized
that I didn't know which arm of government he meant.
All government, national, regional, and local,
are presently in a state of prolonged semi-collapse
with no sign of a return to a sense of direction in sight.
.
The civil service are what has always held the country together.

Putting the 'Lib' Into 'Libertarian'

Because if we can never be offended
we can never overcome the same
and we will never learn anything new.

Probabilities

When a law is immoral
then breaking it will most likely
increase the level of immorality.

When a law is moral and logical
them the people meant to follow it
will still be immoral, at best
to less harmful effect than before.

No law, however easy it is to apply,
will ever have the effect
that it's writers seek for it to have,
in putting an internal logic to desire.

Uncivilised Entertainments

My present reading is 'How to Murder a Man'
not long ago I enjoyed 'Confessions of a Thug',
both very readable books about life as it was
in the nineteenth century in The British Empire.

The former is set in Ireland, the latter set in India,
at roughly the same time. Both portray the natives
as dishonest in ways that do not flatter the empire
or make it seem as if it were a wholesome thing.

In both books/countries the economy works well
for the few, and badly for the many locals,
who are forced to bend and break the law
to make wealth work a lot better.

Through charm, threat, incantation
and secret planning men (it is always men)
sought 'the good life' where it could be found,
when with laws like those that contended with
the best life was often being dead and in the ground.

In their pursuit they made sure
that many other people got there.