The Latest God

Monday 14 May 2012

I've felt it so strongly, for such a long time.  Our native language is not spoken here.  Not readily.  Oh, some brave souls do.  More and more as time goes on, even though others misunderstand them and ridicule them.  But even though it is our native language they speak, and I drink it like water, when I read or hear their words they still sound funny.  Almost as if I should be ashamed to hear them spoken out into the air, speaking of childish things.

Even though it is our native language, forming the words feels weird in the light of the shape my mouth is in after speaking the other language.  That's the one we've been asked forever to speak.  It troubles our souls from the day we're born and then blames us for being troubled.  "Speak like this," the latest god says.  But I've never felt at home in it.  Its words itched.  They separated, divided, conquered.  Many of us have been impaled on its spikes because we forgot that our native language was real.  It was more real than the language the latest god has asked us to speak.  The latest god said, "This is the only possible way that you can see."  And we accepted what he said because that's what we are wired to do, to accept authority.  Even though it itched, and it quieted what should not be quieted.

"That language is primitive," the latest god said.  "Follow my way." And even though we didn't like it we did, and it took us years to be able to admit that as we followed along behind the latest god what we really were seeing was his bare naked arse.  Because apparently no one else was seeing it.  And anyway, the only way we could speak about the nakedness of the latest god would be to translate it into our native language, the old one, the one we have forgotten, and then translate it back into the latest god's language.  And when that happened the words sounded weird. 

And anyway, the latest god tells me that there is no space or room or time or necessity to see things in these old-fashioned ways - to see things as connected, to desire to do things for love.  And so for years you have felt this golden thread that connects you all is some weird mystical thing that you have to be a bit embarrassed about.  "Those are primitive concepts," the latest god says, "childish things, and you must put them away if you want to get ahead.  There is no space or room or time or necessity for those things that make your heart beat faster, or that enable you to see the person in front of you and the earth below your feet as anything other than elements completely separate from you, elements which you must transfer into goods and services to make money from."  This is what the latest god says because he has one eye in the middle of his forehead, like the chick from Futurama, and that eye has blinkers on either side of it so he can't look from left to right.  The latest god is like a giant head connected to a giant arse, that has spewed his shit all over the earth.

We are addicted to the latest god in the same murderous way that a diabetic is addicted to sugar.  But the latest god he has brought us so much, we cry.  We think that we have one eye in the middle of our forehead with blinkers on, too, and that all those things we yearn for are stupid.

But still we know, deep down.  Hundreds of thousands of years of ancestral knowing flood through our veins, and they know.

I listen to the news and the subjects of the latest god are talking about his dominion and about his growth and expansion.  The latest god is standing right beside them with his testicles hanging in the breeze like an ancient old man whose time has come, but they are blind.  They are terrified because they have forgotten how to speak their native language too.  There are no purple robes for them to wear in that land, and they have not yet developed the synapses that link the thirst they feel in their mouths to the words they have forgotten from since before they could speak.

But some have.  Like here, for example:

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11 comments

  1. thanx for your thought provoking post and shared video
    there is a truth within us and around us that resonates when someone tries to decode it

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  2. Transition to adulthood from a hormone-charged, alienated adolescence. Tidying up the bedroom. Getting on with the parents. And the rest. Oh yes, Sue:)

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  3. Just lovely; a prose poem.
    brad

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  4. Aww, thanks, Brad!  :)

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  5.  I like your analogy, Harry.  I hope so!

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  6. Thanks for reading and looking, Kel. 

    I like the way you describe this.  That resonance has a swirly sort of quality that I find quite exhilarating :)

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  7. That video was so profound...it made me so sad and so happy at the same time. If only....


    One thing he said that really hit me...about how we buy things to fill the hole or loneliness left by our disconnect from nature...it's so much like the biological fact of our disconnect from thirst that we try to fill with food. Or, put another way, 75% of the time we mindlessly eat, we are really just thirsty. 

    Sometimes I think of technology like the Morlocks from "The Time Machine". Yes, it gives us every convenience, but it also has to eat one of us every so often. Is it an ideal trade-off? Society would say yes. 

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  8.  I just love what you say here, Erin.  There is that real happy and sad at the same time thing, isn't there.  Sometimes I think it's GOING to have to happen, because the potential for the end of the world's resources will MAKE it happen.  Maybe.  Hopefully?  I lie in bed at night hoping for this and feeling terrified that we are going to destroy ourselves and the earth.  Man, we are fucked up in some real tangible ways.  But .... but ... I do think that hope and working towards that in whatever way we can does make some sort of a difference.  Even if it's just for our own sanity.

    I love your analogy about being really being thirsty and filling up the hole with food.  That hole is causing a lot of problems, isn't it.

    I haven't seen The Time Machine so I don't know who the Morlocks are.  Do you recommend it?

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  9.  Thanks very much, Brad :)  It's funny reading other people's comments about what you've written.  A prose poem?  I suppose it is.  I wrote it with that dreaminess that tends to come when I write in this fashion :)

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  10. See or read The Time Machine, for sure...it's a classic book by HG wells, written in 1895. Talk about profound...waaaay ahead of its time. There are two movies of it...one from the 60's and one from 2002. They are both pretty decent adaptations of the book. It's all about the future. You'd like it. 

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  11.  Ooh, cool.  Thanks.  I just added the 60's version to my Quickflix queue.  Wheee!!!!  :)

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