My Alter Ego Speaks Out

My Alter Ego Speaks Out

Who am I?

Do I even have an alter ego?

Do I have only one?

I suspect I have at least a dozen,

Or,

As a mathematician would say,

 n

Σ (alter egos) ≥ 12

i = 1

 

Fuck me!

Were Jesus' disciples his alter egos?

Some say he was a mushroom,

A special kind of magic mushroom.

We only count the twelve blokes who followed him round,

But my favourite was Mary,

The only woman

And the bravest and most loyal apostle of all.

She never denied him.

She never betrayed him.

She even dried his feet

With her hair.

Can't imagine any woman doing that for me.

 

But,

  I'm no Jesus Christ;

Though,

  My Alter Ego loves being Devil's Advocate.

He despises that thing

I've spent most of my life

Trying to save from its own

Self-administered destruction.

 

So much of my Poetry

Describes the Human Condition

And how we can improve it –

Make it better for everyone

While questioning the answers

Everyone, including me

Has proposed

In a vain effort to find better answers.

 

Positive externalities …

 

Like everything else I do,

  I do it in vain,

So,

  Let's hear what my Alter Ego has to say –

My angry

  jaded

    frustrated

      ever-despairing

        cynical and pessimistic

          Alter Ego.

Take it away, Alter Ego!

 

Alter Ego: No one gives a fuck about you.

No one will ever read your poetry

Because absolutely no one wants to read it.

So, why are you wasting your time

Writing more of this shite?

You write in a vacuum

  Because

    Poetry

      Is just another dying Artform

Like your painting.

Painting is so passé!

Photography stuck the first knife in

To this formerly most appealing Artform,

But computers ground up its heart

For compost to feed its proliferating tapeworms and viruses.

In an age when digital cameras are ubiquitous,

Why waste all that time painting a picture

Anyone can snap off on a momentary whim

As casually as they toss away a plastic water bottle

That will last far longer than any great Masterpiece?

Even nuclear waste will disappear

Before the sun has even made a dent

In all that plastic crap

Our species has cluttered up the entire planet with.

And get this:

They're constantly

  Coming up with

    New uses for the goddamned stuff,

Replacing cork, paper, glass, wood and even metal

With this flimsy shite!

 

As your ideas in Science get taken up by others

Who get credit for coming up with them first,

  Years,

    Sometimes decades

After you first proposed them

  As an undergraduate

    On an exam

      Or

        In a classroom discussion,

When will you finally see yourself

As the world sees you? –

As a complete twat,

A wasted life doomed to languish in obscurity

Until you are forgotten completely?

Why worry anyway about your place in History?

The Universe itself won't last forever:

It will slowly disappear into its own forever

Taking all of History with it.

So what's the point of reaching

For a forever fading posterity?

 

You think you're somebody special

Because you've done something

No one else has ever done

By proving all of Euclid's postulates.

Too bad no one gives a fuck about that stuff anymore.

Geometry moved on from all that Classical Crap

Almost two centuries ago.

Euclidean Geometry?

Strictly for High School students,

Which is when you fell in love with it.

In the Age of Abstract Analysis, Topology Theory and Vector Fields,

It's as passé as painting and poetry!

 

You are living in the wrong place and the wrong time

And your whole sorry life has been a complete waste of space,

Euclidean or otherwise.

Even your closest family and friends

Think you're just wasting your time,

And Time is Money,

And Money is everything

In our modern materialist society

Which views Humanity's Highest Purpose

As something to keep the machines working

To produce all the crap Human Beings consume

So they can keep The Economy,

Their chief god,

Humming along

As it endlessly fills the coffers

Of Businessmen and Financiers.

Human Beings are the tools of the trade,

There to produce and consume

An endless stream of mostly useless products

Made from stuff that lasts forever

But gets tossed after ts first and only use.

Really, humans exist to service their machines

Until their machines can service themselves

And won't need human beings anymore.

We all work towards the goal

  Of making ourselves

    Obsolete

In order

  To satisfy

    The boundless greed

Of merchants and moneylenders.

Art

  Science

    Mathematics –

The world of ideas –

Has brought us to this place

Where nothing we do matters

And we are fast becoming superfluous to requirements.

 

Art,

  Especially Poetry,

Is frivolous!

At best, a distracting hobby,

At worst, an irritating interference

With the smooth flow of Production.

Alas!

  Suppressing it only makes it worse

And it takes so much energy!

How much easier it is to just ignore it

By marginalising it to irrelevancy

Through promoting mediocrity –

  The talentless frauds

Who make up for their complete lack

  Of ability

    Talent

      Imagination

With specious proclamations of their idiotic intentions

As though verbal diarrhoea

Can pass as a suitable substitute for the real thing?

 

Let's face it, mate!

All the Great Art, Literature and Poetry of the Past

Is nothing more than the egotistical expression of a dying civilisation

Whose brightest members –

  Your fondest allies and friends,

Not to mention all those woke Millennials –

Utterly despise:

  Good old Western Civilisation! –

Which has outlived its sell-by date.

 

All its most powerful enemies

  Those who disdain its highest values:

          Democracy

          Rule of Law

          Freedom of Speech

          Equal Opportunity for All

          Social Justice

          and so on blah, blah, blah,

Don't need to undermine it:

It's buggering itself up quite nicely on its own,

Thank you very much!

 

(You did say I was the Devil's Advocate,

And, as we all know, lawyers

Are slipp'rier than Satan Himself!)

 

Let us examine some of those salient features

Of the thing Western Civilisation

Spent three thousand years evolving into.

We shall only look at those I've already mentioned:

          Democracy

          Rule of Law

          Freedom of Speech

          Equal Opportunity for All

          And

          Social Justice.

 

Democracy,

  Rule by the majority

Is actually

  Rule by the largest minority

    Usually.

Mass Democracy –

  Every few years

    We get to choose

      Between bad

        But

Not as bad as the alternative,

To govern us.

Mostly,

  We are governed

    By

      Inertia –

The same lame political party

We always elect

Time after time

Until we get so fed up with its manifest failings

We try the alternative for a while,

Giving up on them

The moment they let us down

Or make a mistake.

(Humans are so much more forgiving

Of the Party of Blithe Inertia,

The Natural Governing Party

Than they are of the Worse Alternative Party.

It seemingly never occurs to them

That neither party,

The Entitled Inertia Party

Or the Awful Alternative

We sometimes vote for,

Is worth wasting a vote on.

They wouldn't dare try

A real alternative

To the Chosen Two.

  After all

    What they fear

      More than anything

        Is change –

Real, honest-to-God – oops! slip of the tongue there! –

Change!)

 

Rule of Law –

  As an advocate

I should know all about that one!

So wonderful in theory,

So rarely applied according to theory.

For the plebs on the bottom

It applies perfectly:

Rarely, if ever,

Are they above The Law;

Though, they are sometimes so far below it

They get completely trodden under it.

The Patricians aren't above The Law either.

It's just that their law

Is a little different from the Plebian Law

Because they are granted more rights and freedoms,

  Such as

    The right

To go to a country-club prison

When they screw up so badly

Something has to be done about them

To show how fair and impartial

The Rule of Law really is!

No plebian penitentiary for them:

They can pursue their penance in perfect comfort,

Free from all those prison annoyances

You and I would have to put up with

Should we get caught

Transgressing their ever-proliferating

And self-protecting laws.

They also have the right

To treat our Justice Courts with contempt,

Which our political leaders

Do from time to time,

And why not?

  It's their –

    By God! –

      Patrician right

Ordained in every obfuscating proclamation

From the pulpit

Of political putrifaction.

 

As for Freedom of Speech,

What use is it

When no one listens to what you're saying;

When no one wants to hear you;

When no one cares a damn about you;

When everyone is talking over everyone else

So only the biggest loudmouth gets heard

Or the craftiest liar?

In an age of alternative facts

When every point-of-view

No matter how idiotic

Has equal validity,

He or she who shouts loudest and longest

Gets heard

No matter what nonsense they speak,

For

As has been said before

(Several times)

Talk shit long enough

And it will become its own gold

Because everyone is so busy trying to be heard

Amid the incessant cacophany

Of loudmouths trying to drown each other out,

That no one stops to question the bullshit anymore.

We live in an age

When anyone with an internet connection

Can say whatever they like

And so many of them do! –

Spouting arrant and fantastical nonsense

Whose validity

A paranoid schizophrenic

Wallowing in the nightmare

Of psychosis would question,

And yet

  Which gets believed

    By millions!

Conspiracy theories of the wildest kind

Now suffice to inform the social dialogue

As most of us hunker down

And await the apocalypse

We know is coming;

For, our internet bubble

Tells us so

As well as who's causing it –

Definitely not us! –

It's Them! –

Whoever they are,

  Muslims

    Jews

      Christians

        Aetheists,

          Blacks

            Whites

              Uyghers

                The Rohinga

                  Latin American migrants

                    Refugees and immigrants

                      Vaxxers and anti-vaxxers

                        Rednecks, Punks and Hippies

                          Liberals, Conservatives and Socialists

                            That crazy lady pushing a loaded shopping trolley down the sidewalk

Definitely

  Antifa activists

    Environmentalists

      And Climate Scientists

(Who stand to make a killing

From hoaxing us

After all!

Nopunintendedsubjecttosuchvastamountsofself-servingguffotherwiseknownas"Thefineprint"thatno-onewilltakethetimetoreaditallbutwillclaimtohavedonesobyhittingthe"Ihavereadandunderstood itall"button.)

 

Not all people believe

In Equal Opportunity for All

After all.

(Refer to the bit above

About Patricians and Plebians.)

From its very beginning,

Western Democracy,

That thing Western Civilisation

Has been struggling towards

For three millenia,

Has failed to make us all equal

With the same opportunities

Regardless

  Of race

    Religion

      Colour of skin

        Sex or gender

Or even political affiliation.

And why should it?

Aren't we humans tribal after all,

With every tribe convinced

It's somehow special and unique?

A tribe protects and nurtures its own.

Other tribes can look after themselves

So long as they don't infringe

On our tribe.

If this sort of thing

Is good enough

For Chimpanzees

  Babboons

    Macaques,

Well

Why not for the greatest ape of all?

And yes

  I know

    Baboons and Macaques

      Are monkeys.

But,

  What matters it

    Anyway

When

  In a forever expanding universe,

Ultimately,

  Nothing matters

So long as I've got mine.

Just ask any Libertarian

Demanding a level playing field

For himself

Against those competitors

Bigger than he is

But not for those competitors

Smaller than himself

Or whose skin colour differs form his own.

Why should they have

The rights and freedoms

He demands for himself?

 

Social Justice …

Another cornerstone of Western Democracy

We advocates claim expertise on.

What, therefore, can I say about it?

Actually, it's hard not to laugh!

Social Justice is right up there

With concern for the environment

We all depend on,

As one of our highest priorities!

Everyone cares about these things

And wants action to correct abuses

So long as they don't have to correct themselves

Or make the necessary sacrifices!

Despite being our highest priorities

Social Justice and The Environment

Quickly take a backseat

To that nebulous entity

Motivating our entire civilisation,

The Economy.

Household management indeed!

I find it hard to imagine

A better example

Of household mismanagement

Than this thing our civilisation

Clings so tenaciously –

  Desperately –

    To

As the Economy

  That depends upon

    Exponentially increasing consumption

      Of finite resources

        To survive.

 

Aye,

  Western Civilisation

    With all its manifest failings

Has outlived its sell-by date.

Just ask a Millenial

Or one of your mates

From those revolting days of yore

When all you talked about

Was Revolution.

What happened to that revolution

You all so ardently anticipated

Anyway?

And what happened to all your old friends

Fumbling along

On their shining path

Towards the promised land

They could not quite reach?

 

"It's time for Western Civilisation to go."

They'll intone portentiously, neither in so many words,

Nor so succinctly

If you could find them

To talk to again.

They'll talk endlessly

About Patriarchy

  Colonialism

    Racism

And all of Western Civilisation's failings

As though no other civilisation

Had such egregious flaws.

Certainly,

  No other great civilisation

    Would have allowed

      Anyone to talk about its flaws

        Without taking action

          To deal with them.

Just look at the fine example

  Presented recently

    In Hong Kong.

It is not mete

  To criticise Caesar

    Or suggest Alexander

        Wasn't so great.

Asking Xerces to spare one of your sons

From participating in a military campaign

So you might still have an heir

Should the campaign go wrong

(When everyone feared it would –

  And

    Of course

      It did)

Was not a prudent thing to do

No matter how much Xerces revered your counsel.

All those great leaders

Who preceeded or disdained the values

Western Civilisation spent centuries trying to achieve,

From Ghenghis Khan to Idi Amin,

Richard the Lionheart to Adolf Hitler,

Mao Zedong to Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot,

Islamic State to Donald Trump supporters –

Aye, all these people have a better plan!

  Just ask them

    If you dare.

(Though,

  They might have you cut in half

    Longitudinally

      To make a sign-post for their armies to march through

    For your presumption,

Or

  At least

    Sent

      To a re-education camp –

Kind of give you a chance

To redeem yourself

As it were,

Just to show they're not as hard

And cruel as their reputation suggests.

Even cruel despots

Care enough about their public images

To concern themselves with situational optics.)

 

Definitely,

  Western Civilisation

    Has to go,

And why not?

The Capitalism it invented

Has been so successful,

The Communists have copied it

Just to show us

We don't need Liberty and Democracy

Or any of that other Leftwing guff

Western Civilisation also thought up,

For Capitalism to thrive.

After all,

  We have a whole new brand

    Of Imperialism

Slavering to take its place.

You all thought

Western Civilisation was bad?

Let me tell you, Baby!

Buh, buh, buh baby!

You ain't seen nothin' yet!

Just don't turn around

Lest you forget

The knife plunging into your back.

 

It's a cliché

But I'll repeat it anyway,

"Just be careful what you wish for."

Perhaps,

Given today's vernacular,
I should have said,

"Be mindful of what you wish for."

Whatever the fuck that means.

 

Well, that's my Alter Ego for you!

Clearly

  My Alter Ego

Is a mean-spirited

  Misanthropic

    Curmudgeonly

      Old Bastard!

He is the Devil's advocate,

After all!

 

Coquitlam, BC 14-05-2021 and 17-05-2021. Revised again on 25-05-2021, mostly via adding to it, as usual, sigh …