More My Elan
Some old pre-Blogspot.com posts, recycled.
Friday, December 26, 2003
HGH of the century
I was watching a thing on TV on the life of Jesus, and it suddenly became clear to me - we're not a spiritual people any more.
See, there was this picture of a tribesman laying beside his little fire and tending it, and you could tell that even though he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he was having deep thoughts. Unlike us.
He was having the deep thoughts because, you see, he had bugger all else to do except think philosophical and spiritual thoughts. No boss breathing down his neck for 'that job that was due yesterday,' no need to worry about finding parking for the car, nothing like that disturbed his little pool of calm. Unlike us.
He wasn't worried if his PC was infected with a virus, he wasn't reading spam about viagra and human growth hormone, and he didn't have to fret about a mortgage. Seems all too idyllic doesn't it?
Because that's what we get today - all that pressure to live forever, perform forever. No wonder we don't have time to sit and poke little twigs into a fire and think deeply fulfilling thoughts about eternal life...
We rush from one thing to another, out of a bed that's 1000% better than this guy's sleeping position in the dirt beside his fire, to a breakfast which is probably what his local king would eat, to a job where we can feel fulfilled and productive, unlike him whose only imprtant function was probably to act as a human fence to a bunch of goats.
Lunch is something he would think about while chewing up a couple of freshly preserved olives and some dry fetta and flatbread, he wouldn't even dream about a lunch like we're having with a chicken schnitzel burger with salad and mayo, or a sit-down meal at Old Papa's or Il Vecc or whatever our favourite nosh spot is. Hell, one of our meals, he'd probably split with his family because it's so big.
While we go home to a house that's a few hundred squares, he'd go back to a cosy little cabin, where our place is filled with spouses and kids, his would also contain the family goat and the family dog, the grandparents, and his brother's family as well, there'd be camaraderie and people all around, real love none of this "love you daddy i'm going to bed now' stuff for him.
Then while we were catching up on the news after dinner, and logging into our ISP to check our emails, he'd be tending the sickest child and repeating the stories he'dheard from the other herders, and whatever it was he'd thought of while he was burning that stuff in the fire.
We'd tell our other half the best of the latest crop of jokes, he'd be discussing what Ali bin Yussef has been doing with turning seemingly ordinary mud into superb cooking utensils.
He was so lucky, we're so unlucky - yes?
Because then, when we in the present get to the bit of email that says "live forever! HGH will fix your knackered old body, make you feel better, and make your whole life better!', well that's the part where, in his world, he opens his eyes really wide and asks if anyone's heard of this Jesus person, because, he says "this Jesus says we can live forever! Religion will fix our knackered old body, make us feel better, and make our whole life better!'
And that's where, suddenly, it becomes unclear whether the old spiritual and new clinical modern couldn't just be the same thing but under a different layer of snake oil...
These are random blog posts I recently rescued from a text dump of my earliest recorded blog posts from Ye Good Ole Days of writing stuff in Notepad and using some weird software that basically uploaded your entire blog every time you added a new article or edited an old one.
I'm shamelessly adding that little mini-banner graphic with links for you to donate, check my newsletter site, and generally get more entangled in my weird world.
No comments:
Post a Comment