Sunday, December 16, 2007

HALLMARKS OF CIVILIZATION



















Asphalt- suffocates the earth and heats up everything. Bugs avoid it.

Garbage- everywhere you look it blows through the air and keeps piling up.

Loudness- alarms, buzzers, weed whips. Essential elements to keep us in a state of mild agitation.

Boxes- includes cages, cubicles and crates. Can be used for transport, housing and work.

Growth- essential component of industrial economic mentality. Operates like the cancer cell.

Garage- a must have to store all the boxes.

Plastic- useful for choking up waterways and birds. Also useful for buying stuff, mostly plastic stuff. Never leave home without it.

Wires- dangling from every pole, house and ear.

Vehicles- metal boxes often used to carry other vehicles.

Colossal Banditry- conventional usage names this "Development." Without this minor detail Civilization loses it's veneer and quickly becomes savage.

Grass- necessary to highlight the hedges and make use of Sunday leisure time. Mower not included.

Mirrors- a whole hall full. Necessary for narcissistic culture and to continue the illusion that no one is catching up.

Heavily Packaged- all sales and marketing techniques come with this, like Civilization itself. Ultimately turns into garbage, like Civilization itself.

Well-Groomed- must keep up appearances. The facade is crucial to masque that which lies beneath beneath the skin. That being copious amounts of "uncivilized" blood.

Servants- billions needed. Used to be human units, shackled and chained of 'Slavery' now uniformed human units, often wearing visors, employed in the 'service economy.'

Museums- congealed ideologies live here. Nothing moves. Attendees happiest when eating ice cream.

Insurance- a reminder that no matter what money will secure our future.

Paperwork- lends a certain air of import to those doing it. Mistakenly thought of as work.

Control- everything wild and free to be exterminated or caged. Boxes can be helpful here.

Straight Lines- elegant oxbows are inefficient. Rectilinear architecture to keep things in order.

Lights- all the time. Everywhere. Mystery makes civilization uneasy.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Lights. All the time, everywhere. Mystery makes Civilization uneasy.

Yes. The "white man's fire" is a running joke among my friends. Even among those who get "away from civilization" and do a little outdoor recreation including camping, you can find this fear of the mystery inherent in night-time and darkness. You can see campsites with only 1 or 2 people, but a fire that looks like a mini-Hiroshima. What are they burning all that fuel for? Why do they need such intense heat? What compels them to need so much light.

Fear.

We are a nation of cowards. The few who have at least one testicle tend to get cowed by the sackless eunuch wimps.

That leaves the rest of us two-balls to fix the program. I'm ready. How about you?

(the rest of the list is good, of course)