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A Solution To War? Humanity And The Tendency To Disagree
The thing about human beings was this: human beings couldn’t agree. They couldn’t agree about anything. Right from the moment their ancestors first slimed out of the oceans, and one group of sludge thought it better to live in trees while the other thought it blatantly obvious that the ground was the place to live. And they’d disagreed about pretty much everything else ever since.
They disagreed about politics, religion, philosophy-every-thing.
And the reason was this: basically, all human beings believed all other human beings were insane, in varying degrees.
Small wonder, then that homo sapiens spent most of their short time on Earth waging war against each other.
For their first few thousand years on the planet they did little else, and they discovered two things that were very curious: the first was that when they were at war, they agreed more. Whole nations agreed that other nations were insane, and they agreed that the mutually beneficial solution was to band together to eliminate the loonies. The only time human beings lived happily side by side was when they were trying to kill each other.
Then in the middle of the twentieth century the human race hit a major problem.
It got so good at war it couldn’t have one anymore.
It had spent so much time practising and perfecting the art of genocide, developing more and more lethal devices for mass destruction, that conducting a war without totally obliterating the planet and everything on it became an impossibility.
This didn’t make human beings happy at all. They talked about how maybe it was still possible to have a small, contained war. A little war. If you like, a warette.
They spoke of conventional wars, limited wars, and this insane option might even have worked, if only people could have agreed on a new set of rules. But, people being people, they couldn’t.
War was out. War was a no-no.
And, like a small child suddenly deprived of it’s favorite toy, the human race mourned and sulked and twiddled it’s collective thumbs, wondering what to do next. Then in the twenty-first century a solution was found.
The solution was sport…….
Except from; Red Dwarf – Better than Life. By Grant Naylor.
A Solution To War? Humanity And The Tendency To Disagree
The thing about human beings was this: human beings couldn’t agree. They couldn’t agree about anything. Right from the moment their ancestors first slimed out of the oceans, and one group of sludge thought it better to live in trees while the other thought it blatantly obvious that the ground was the place to live. And they’d disagreed about pretty much everything else ever since.
They disagreed about politics, religion, philosophy-every-thing.
And the reason was this: basically, all human beings believed all other human beings were insane, in varying degrees.
Small wonder, then that homo sapiens spent most of their short time on Earth waging war against each other.
For their first few thousand years on the planet they did little else, and they discovered two things that were very curious: the first was that when they were at war, they agreed more. Whole nations agreed that other nations were insane, and they agreed that the mutually beneficial solution was to band together to eliminate the loonies. The only time human beings lived happily side by side was when they were trying to kill each other.
Then in the middle of the twentieth century the human race hit a major problem.
It got so good at war it couldn’t have one anymore.
It had spent so much time practising and perfecting the art of genocide, developing more and more lethal devices for mass destruction, that conducting a war without totally obliterating the planet and everything on it became an impossibility.
This didn’t make human beings happy at all. They talked about how maybe it was still possible to have a small, contained war. A little war. If you like, a warette.
They spoke of conventional wars, limited wars, and this insane option might even have worked, if only people could have agreed on a new set of rules. But, people being people, they couldn’t.
War was out. War was a no-no.
And, like a small child suddenly deprived of it’s favorite toy, the human race mourned and sulked and twiddled it’s collective thumbs, wondering what to do next. Then in the twenty-first century a solution was found.
The solution was sport…….
Except from; Red Dwarf – Better than Life. By Grant Naylor.
Updated 2020: “Killer Robots” Could Become Reality If UN Talks Continue To Delay, Expert Warns
And humankind built Androids called Simulants/Agonoids in it’s own image.
Agonoids were designed to be the perfect exponents of the favourite human sport: Killing!
Mechanical warriors without any of the ucky bits that prevented humans from wiping out all life on the planet, such as pity, mercy or morality. And because their bodies didn’t contain any of the squishy or crunchy bits that made humans fairly easy to kill, they were virtually indestructible.
They were programmed, of course, to obey orders. But they were also programmed to survive. And when humans started recalling the Agonoid population for decommissioning after a short but satisfying war, the survival instinct kicked in.
Strangely the Agonoids creators were surprised when their creation turned on them. It wouldn’t surprise you and me, but it surprised them. Blew them away, in fact.
Excerpt from The Red Dwarf; Backwards by Rob Grant.
and so it goes……………
Scientists Have Created Programmable Robots Made of Living Tissue — What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Our God’s Are Falling Down
What Cannot Show
Past things that shape me from inside
From boy to man pain magnified
From being bullied to a lover’s lies
The scars that settle deep inside
From a friends betrayal
Or my feelings brushed aside
Part of me has somehow died
Replaced with darkness I’m lost inside
The anger I feel pulsing behind my eyes
Like rising burning poison bile
Flooding over my emotions it then nullifies
Are these symptoms of my going insane?
Or just a fracture through which leaks my pain
From a battle waged within my soul
The emptiness shall not let go
Things out of the past
That shape me from inside
From childhood to man
Pain I try, in vain, to hide
My cries for help
Ignored or vilified
Every trust I extend-betrayed
Loss turns to burning rage inside
I can feel it hiding behind my eyes
Like rising, burning, poison bile
Flooding my emotions to nullify
Just more symptoms of my going insane?
Or just a fracture through which
Leaks my pain
Try to hide-it
Keep it locked-inside
The emptiness which
Invades my mind.
Mark Catlin—2012
Conclusion
Whoever stands at the end of time
At the final act of nature’s design
A last glimpse of beauty
Reflects in their eyes
As all fades from sea to sky
All that remains
Age old questions-why?
Last voices old questions
No time for new
At the end
The last echoes are few
Mark Catlin
April 2018
Technological Unemployment, Politics and Public Apathy
Ignorance and apathy
Is what the politicians love
And if that’s not enough
They’ve given belief in a god above
Just enough education to make sure they can work
And pointless entertainments as a little perk…….
With a technology advancing very rapidly, the workforce required is obviously reduced. With an ever expanding population this means there simply isn’t enough work to go round. Due to the fact our civilisation is structured in such a way that humans need money to be able to get food and shelter, one of only two ways to do so is to earn that money by working for it, in effect selling your skills and the hours of your life to gain (in some cases) barely enough money with which to live comfortably within this society. The other way is via a Country’s welfare safety net whereby people are given enough money to live on whilst they cannot work whether it be due to illness, disability or sheer lack of available work. At least that’s how things in any enlightened civilization should be, but with people having more access to information and questioning those “in charge” and the wealthier seeing their domain being “infiltrated” by the “The Great GU”, around 40-ish years ago things started to change, going backwards rather than continuing onwards to a fairer more inclusive society.
You see after WWII some in Govt realised that due to the extremely large amount of people wiped from the face of the earth during that vile conflict, that a state funded healthcare and welfare system was desperately needed to serve all the people in this country along with a decent educational system, so the UK could be second to none via it’s well-educated, healthy workforce. Unfortunately whilst there were those who embraced this system, there were/are those that looked upon it with disgust. All those healthy and educated people no longer living under the whim of aristocracy and extremely wealthy individuals,(well to a smaller degree for a while anyway!)Large corporations owned/run by greedy rich groups of people whose only reason for living is to hoard more wealth, could not allow this to go on for ever. So over the last 40-ish years they’ve set about dismantling it. Thatcher tried it but came up against serious opposition due to people being better educated and ignored (for the most-part) the underhanded ways politicians and their blood-brothers the so-called free press go about manipulating the population, so of course in the last 30 yrs educational standards have fallen, manipulation of TV, newspapers, entertainment have unfortunately left a large no of population with the attention span of a sound-bite and a rather unhealthy obsession with celebrity, vanity and being rich.
And there you have it with the masses attention easily diverted into whatever direction they dam well please, lazily following whatever fashion, directing their anger against whatever villain they’re told to. The stage is set for the rich few to dismantle the welfare safety net and free healthcare leaving the way open to make ever increasing amounts of money whilst having yet more control over the masses, like they used to in the early-part of the 1900’s. Those that do question and speak-out against the Govt are ridiculed, dismissed or soon if Govt have their way, arrested and shut-up!
Mark Catlin
Oct-Nov 2014
Soup Is Good Food
Soup is Good Food
We’re sorry
But you’re no longer needed
Or wanted
Or even cared about here
Machines can do a better job than you
This is what you get for asking questions
The unions agree
‘Sacrifices must be made’
Computers never go on strike
To save the working man you’ve got to put him out to pasture
Looks like we’ll have to let you go
Doesn’t it feel fulfilling to know
That you-the human being-are now obsolete
And there’s nothing in hell we’ll let you do about it
Soup is good food-
(We don’t need you any more)
You made a good meal-
(We don’t need you any more)
Now how do you feel-
(We don’t need you any more)
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
We’re sorry
You’ll just have to leave
Unemployment runs out after just six weeks
How does it feel to be a budget cut?
You’re snipped
You no longer exist
Your number’s been purged from our central computer
So we can rig the facts
And sweep you under the rug
See our chart?
Unemployment’s going down
If our figures are wrong that’s your problem
Soup is good food……..
We’re sorry
We hate to interrupt
But it’s against the law to jump off this bridge
You’ll just have to kill yourself somewhere else
A tourist might see you
And we wouldn’t want that
I’m just doing my job, you know
So say uncle
And we’ll take you to the mental health zoo
Force feed you mind-melting chemicals
Till even the outside world looks great
In hi-tech science research labs
It costs too much to bury all the dead
The mutilated disease-injected
Surplus rats who can’t be used anymore
So they’re dumped (with no minister present)
In a spiraling corkscrew dispose-all unit
Ground into sludge and flushed away
Aw geez…
We don’t need you any more
We don’t need you any more
Soup is good food
You made a good meal
Now how do you feel
To be shit out our ass
And thrown in the cold like a piece of trash
We know how much you’d like to die
We joke about it on our coffee breaks
But we’re paid to force you to have a nice day
In the wonderful world we made just for you
“Poor Rats”, we human rodents chuckle
At least we get a dignified cremation
At yet
At 6:00 tomorrow morning
It’s time to get up and go to work
Lyrics: Jello Biafra
Music: Dead Kennedys
Revealing Me PtII
Revealing Me. pt.II
This enemy inside
Takes away my pride
Invades my very soul
Won’t leave me alone.
Pushes against me
Day after day you see
Digs through all my pain
Most days are the same.
Yet another day I’m free
Just the real me
Rare, they come they go
It’s the only life I know.
Write out how I feel
So you can know it’s real
The strangeness that is me
What you get is what you see.
Mark Catlin—July2014.
I’m just working on “digitizing” my work (I work longhand), so I can post-it. A lot of the work I’ve been posting I’ve written as an expression of my Manic Depression (now called Bi-polar disorder) it’s my way of saying “this is me, I’m no longer afraid of the stigma that goes hand in hand with mental health problems” So bear with me-more to follow. M
Declaration Of Opinion 
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