Cultural ethics at that time were in part propagated through folk homilies like, a stitch in time saves nine; keeping up with the Jones’s, or not throwing stones if you live in glass houses. Television was still in service of the greater good - my elementary school actually brought the 2 TVs and the student body into the auditorium to watch the first man in space, or second; I forget which. But when the world and its cruelty came for me, it was ma I went crying to, like she had gone to her mother when it happened to her and her mother and father had gone to their mothers, etc. We as a species have handed down cultural norms from generation to generation - those kindnesses that have inspired new epochs in human civilization may have been informed by church, or books, or tradition, but the actual implementation has been largely from parent to child; this is no longer the case. The filter of ma has been replaced by an image on screen. Where my school would never have conceived of asking permission to show students the first space shot; schools are now under assault by moneyed interests who lay claim to the prerogative of what is acceptable and what is not - a moral determination. I was lucky, my family ( read ma’s opinion ) was of the high minded sort, and as with most luck, it cuts both ways.
Suffice it to say ma’s wide ranging interests include specific and rapidly evolving ideas concerning the greatest variety of nuances about most things which when one is very young can be quite useful around hot stoves, not as much after one has broken bones. More luck - an apple could still be pie when I was young, and ma made the finest apple pies I’ve ever tasted - ever. Today, not only has the apple been entirely subsumed by a logo, but that luxurious recollection of hot apple pie has been conflated with an eternal screen stream of empty demands insinuating themselves as personal objectives - definitions of happiness. As with all found luck, there are two sides, and this wannabe fountain of life conforms to other binary fundamentals - on/off; +5v/-5v; yes/no etc. The actual analog of our existence is more like moss to a mountain; it cares not a whit whether we adhere or not; whereas the media fountain of life being fashioned shackle-like to us by bean counters using electronic tethers is entirely predicated on our participation - chew on that for a minute - there is literally nothing to the internet without human contribution . . . ( a contribution you pay “them” to create . ) The modern vernacular while quite crude in the sense of lacking nuance or fineness can be useful; for example; WTF would perfectly fit the idea of being digitally - fleeced, or for the retentive - probed, WTF of course being the acronym of “what the fuck.” ?
While social engineering depicts today’s current peril, in carnivalesque computer generated flourishes there are even larger forces afoot than the imaginary underpinnings of today’s great worth. For example, the Bush family has closed escrow on the largest freshwater aquifer in the world - located at the Brazilian/Argentine border. They did not do this because of nobility, but because from their perspective they can see trajectories of demand for fresh water which allows great “profit taking” with enough capital - demands exacerbated by worldwide fracking technology. My only real objection to this transaction is that it lacks any contribution to humanity - this absence of morality is no longer a luxury the world can support. The fake mothering of the media has you believing you’re just thirsty for something in a bottle magically close - in less than 10 years the Bushes of the world have entirely convinced a planetary population that bottled water is more normal than a faucet, or a stream even. So why would you believe they couldn't fake a mother using an electronic tit - the bosom of belonging an app on your phone? Why else do you suppose the fascist dog whistle of the right is shredding woman; do you honestly think a yutz with teabags taped to his Budweiser cap came up with “barefoot and pregnant” all by himself. These corrosive policies are the result of a few hundred very small frightened people without work or purpose, but who believe like the United States Supreme Court that money talks and lots of money talks a lot . Where i come from : talk is cheap .
My mother carried me to term - 9 months and depending on the era or the attributed angst, I was as big as Godzilla or a month and a half in the delivery room. What is fact, I was Frank Breech folded at the waist, ass-first; no one can ever know of that experience, save ma and myself - each from vastly different perspectives. I try to understand her pain - to know what torments her heart and seemingly forces her to do what she does, or to know what prevents her from joy and celebration of what she has done if what I suspect is true. I feel none of this compassion or care for any part of the charade being trotted out as “civilization” by the incessant nag from our adoptive nurturer - the wannabe tit. Nor do I reject this fake nipple exclusively because of the goat’s milk they doused me with as an infant, it is from the confusion and conflict that was inherent to my family, to all families which have made substance all that I can choke down. Fake anything - pales compared to a mother’s pain, anyone’s pain. Suffering cannot be coded - there is no green screen large enough that will ever explain the misery being unleashed on today’s world - The “Cancer Trains” from the GMO-poisoned fields of Punjab; the fire-storms of the droughted-radioactive Pacific West, or the stifled cry of the human heart from anyone without enough of what they need and too much fear of what they don’t need. My ma cannot save me, nor I her, but I am obliged to do everything possible to create meaning from the joy, as well as the misery that ma has given me breath to know. If these words were found amongst the last written by human, would they explain anything about our species’ final throes ?
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