1997 journal entries
Everything Anybody Needs to Know About Civilization
I was chagrained when my English teacher returned my journal with the comment “Many dates and Messages are Meaningless. I found this message curious.
That is the context, and the reason why I wrote … the following… down.:
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Everything Anybody Needs to Know About Civilization
Civilization is rooted in mankind’s desire to set up systems. Indeed, the history of civilization can be tracked back to the first time a homo-whatever began to plan out a system of finding oversized club things tokill large animals and knock down mates with.
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Where Civilization Went Awry
Mankind, as monkey-oids, found a great void in their beings and began to wonder what was the point. They attempted to solve their problems of alienation by unleasing their feelings through three outlets: Religion, Art, and Brute Force.
Religion sort of conflicted with the other two outlets, and with itself.
Brute force caused much property damage. And people started finding it difficult to justify it. It felt like all it was was “boom boom.” But an idea struck someone: Let’s fight over religion!
Meanwhile, art lead to architecture, and the creation of the wheel.
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at any rate, many of the artists discovered that by prostituting their art, they could become god-like in the eyes of many people. So we arrived at talentless rock bands and movie stars, most novelists, and that “Dogs Playing Poker” painter. Some stayed “pure”, but ended up in poverty, etc.
People began trading leaves for useful commodities. The idea sprung up, caught on, and before anyone knew it the leaves and their abstract value were more valuable than the commodities themselves. Before we knew it, the leaves were replaced with shiny rocks. Money somehow worked because everyone got it into their heads that it would work. Later on, Aspirin would have the same effect on the species.
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So civilization has been on the decline since the ancient Greeks, and more precisely the period of that philosophical nut and that guy who discovered comedy and whosit– the man who found out why boats float…
An all instrusive government developed. The leaders (who had convinced the subjects that they were Gods) realized the full extent of their powers and wielded it to build really neat stuff whilst lying on their fat butts.
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Now we get to the Roman Empire… History repeated itself a few times, and no new new things occured. The fall happened as some huge puny men were fighting tigers in the coliseum… but the tigers were not men in tiger suits, as they are these day.
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These ancients decided, “Let’s shove our weird belief system down these Indians’ throats.” Soooo… they did. But the Indidans didn’t like it, so they killed them. (There’s a lot of death in the history of human civilization.) The religious fanatics decided to move on. SO, they set up a fort in Walla Walla. It’s an interesting enough story, how Whitman forged this into place, but it’s immaterial.
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This goes back to the post-monkey era. Og, a very intelligent unshaven man…
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Since the intelligentsia had now shed away the concepts of religion, all laws floated away. No God equals no Rules, you see. Someone famous said that — I think he may be Russian, I dunno. So the crumbling and unilateral burning of ideas went on without protest. Thwarting occurred throughout the world, the Earth if thou wish call “the world”.