With all respect to those who devote their lives to gaining poli knowledge or taking sides, and though I've hardly been able to skim this bulky thread, I feel a need to say I think it sucks.
Is an energy sucker. A vacuum. An oxygen thief.
There is very little wisdom to be found here, not much listening or tendering,
no meaningful healing or enlightenment or understanding taking place, just the self-indulgent sound of
scoring points, catching game, playing to win. And like
history, it only repeats itself. I've just come from the Met board
where Marion Shore says to someone in peripheral kindness, We are a literary, not a politcal forum.
The excess of this thread came to mind.
I don't suggest we turn away from politics and war and all the other stuffs of life here in General Talk.
Indeed I find many of the political discussions and head crashes intelligent, even enlightening
at times, but not this one. We can choose not to read here, and yet,
it still sucks. Literally. Is an energy sucker. A vacuum. An oxygen thief. This is not a plea to cease and decist, but some small morsel
of food offered at the o so unstable table of All Things in moderation.
Where wisdom breathes may we all be, but from here, I only see
Dan H loves playing king, Shameless is the jester, Kevin is the passion police, and war is. Next. The new guy suits up, wants
to find a role, wants, like everyone else, to win. Perhaps
there'something to learn about war, about the tribe,
and about how humans
discuss war or listen to one another, but I suspect such learning can only come when the win
is no longer the most important thing.
Nothing personal, people. I've nothing against
spectacle, but endless spectacle....
Yours in Pollyana clothes. And of course,
a poem.
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-- Jack Gilbert
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