Chaos confounds us and obscures the Omnipresent Truth. Forms deceive us and lead us to perceive the Many where there is but the One. Colors overwhelm us and blind us to the pure Light that pervades all. Yet chaos has been conquered, and forms deconstructed, by wise men blessed with extraordinary insight. The prism of Thought-that-is-beyond-thought has repeatedly reclaimed Light-that-is-beyond-color from the radiant but temporary hues of this world. If this hard-won Truth is to reach all, it must be simplified, for common eyes cannot take in uncommon Light.
The function of myth, as Joseph Campbell points out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is to simplify the Truth so that it will enter and ennoble the consciousness of the common man. There are many myths in every culture, and while they might differ in form, they all share the aim of elevating all men to the great heights first scaled by a select few.
Of course, the biggest myth of them all, and one that pervades all cultures, is that the common man will understand all this jazz. The common man, as the reader might have noticed, looks like a nincompoop, talks like a nincompoop, and behaves like a nincompoop. Applying the scientific method, it is safe to conclude that, barring any future evidence to the contrary, the common man is a nincompoop. No matter how much a thing is simplified, it is still too complicated for everyone to understand it.
Take, for instance, that touching, tragic and heroic Brownese myth, the Ramayana. It has been perverted so much that brown people take that great freedom fighter Ravana to be a lustful wife-snatcher. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected. Epic is, after all, creatively written history; history is, after all, the chest-beating propaganda of the victor; and the victor was after all that scheming Bhaiya Rama. In any case, brown people will believe anything they read in their textbooks, including the ridiculous theory of evolution, which directly contradicts the divine Ramayana.
The reader, being a seasoned nitwit, fails to see the connection. Let me explain. Clearly, as the Ramayana points out, North Indians are real men and South Indians are monkeys. Thus, the theory of evolution implies that North Indians came from South Indians, a proposition offensive to both parties. If brown people had any brains, they should see red, cry foul and let slip the dogs of war. Instead, they blithely sing hosannas to Charlie Darwin in 50-word answers to 3-mark questions. Has there ever been, I demand to know, a race more credulous or more laughable?
One might say that expecting brown people to understand myth is as unfair as expecting them to use condoms. After all, it is not without reason that brown people have been subjugated. The white man, on the other hand, is not a subjugatee but a subjugater. From him, we have come to expect better. Is he not the inventor of the highly unintuitive toilet paper, and its essential accompaniments, eau-de-cologne and the remarkable Scabex ointment which guarantees instant relief from painful sores in private parts? Indeed, as the Scabex promos proudly proclaim:
If your backside is all a-boil,
Don't simply hose it with oil.
Stick some Scabex up yo' ass,
'N walk again with some class.
To the refined white superbrain that developed these and many more wonders, myth, one would expect, is but child's play.
Alas, even the princely race of white men diasppoints, when in comes to interpreting myth. Consider that deeply symbolic tale of the fall of Man. The popular belief is that the first man and his missus were sauntering along the beachfront property that God had allotted them, when they came across Satan in the form of a serpent. You, gentle reader, are a real man. On seeing a snake, you would have smashed its head, fleeced its skin, and had shoes made for your mistress. Instead, the first man stupidly chose to leave the snake alive. On the other hand, the first woman did exactly what your wife does to every new reptile on the block: she talked to it. (As I have always maintained, only one gender in this species seems to be evolving.) Thereupon the snake convinced the first frau to bite off the Fruit of Knowledge, which is widely believed to have been an apple. In spite of God giving them express instructions to keep their hands off the said produce, Mr and Mrs Uno took a bite. Thereby they realized in stages that they were
(1) ugly,
(2) nangoo, and
(3) screwed.
This popular belief is, as always, exceedingly childish. The logical fallacies are numerous and egregious. For instance, we have reason to believe that God, for all his faults, is not a frigging vegan. If He went to the trouble of making a Tree of Knowledge, wouldn't He make it bear mangoes or jackfruit or some such respectable thing instead of God-forsaken apples?
And then there is the glaring fact that there is no Horse in the story of the Fall. As anyone who has followed the Aryan invasion debate knows, the role of the Horse is pivotal. A theory without a Horse is no theory at all, but merely a pseudo-secular far-left opinion, a piece of vile anti-national Chinese-sponsored propaganda.
Clearly, the popular understanding of the Fall is a pile of horse-manure. Fortunately, intelligent people can see past popular belief into the real meaning of things.
My comrade and partner-in-crime P~, for one, offers a very original and off-beat interpretation of the story of man's fall here. P~'s interpretation, which I encourage the reader to read, is highly profound. Unfortunately, it is also wrong.
First, P~'s story has no horse either.
Second, P~ implies that there really is no such thing as Evil on earth. He obviously hasn't met enough Tamil people.
Third, he naively tries to make everybody look good in the story of the Fall. While that is charming, it is highly unrealistic. Even in regular fairytales, where the author has license to dream, you usually get one good person, at best two. Clearly, even those in the fantasy business know that fantasy should be tempered with realism. In P~'s story, on the other hand, 4 different individuals--Senor God, Senor Uno, Senora Uno and Senor Sssss--are good. Tell me, gentle reader: Talking man to man, of all the people that you know, does not everyone except you strike you as a rather villainous serial rapist? Where, then, can this fantastic assemblage of four good individuals be found, except in P~'s ultra left-wing liberal mind?
Do not get me wrong: P~ is a frightfully intellectual bloke, who always keeps bothering himself about the Human Condition, as if it were a tooth about to fall. But the trouble with P~ is that for all his brains, he has no prior experience in busting well-entrenched myths. Your humble correspondent, on the other hand, is a past master at busting w.-e. myths.
Brownistan's greatest myth of the 1990s was that our class topper G~ was unbeatable in power systems. However, in the heady summer of 1998, one handsome lad outscored G~ in not one, but two, consecutive Power Systems quizzes. If P~ had been that lad, I would have bowed to him, kissed the ground beneath his feet and accepted his interpretation of the Fall of Man. As it turns out, that giant-slaying lad was not P~, but yours truly. Having thus proved my worth for once and forever, I exercise my right to call P~ wrong. Instead, I will give a parallel interpretation of the Fall in one of my posts, whenever the mood takes me.
Till then, gentle reader, amuse yourself with harmless pleasures. Covet your neighbor's wife if you like, but kindly covet from a distance.
Pip-pip.
The function of myth, as Joseph Campbell points out in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, is to simplify the Truth so that it will enter and ennoble the consciousness of the common man. There are many myths in every culture, and while they might differ in form, they all share the aim of elevating all men to the great heights first scaled by a select few.
Of course, the biggest myth of them all, and one that pervades all cultures, is that the common man will understand all this jazz. The common man, as the reader might have noticed, looks like a nincompoop, talks like a nincompoop, and behaves like a nincompoop. Applying the scientific method, it is safe to conclude that, barring any future evidence to the contrary, the common man is a nincompoop. No matter how much a thing is simplified, it is still too complicated for everyone to understand it.
Take, for instance, that touching, tragic and heroic Brownese myth, the Ramayana. It has been perverted so much that brown people take that great freedom fighter Ravana to be a lustful wife-snatcher. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected. Epic is, after all, creatively written history; history is, after all, the chest-beating propaganda of the victor; and the victor was after all that scheming Bhaiya Rama. In any case, brown people will believe anything they read in their textbooks, including the ridiculous theory of evolution, which directly contradicts the divine Ramayana.
The reader, being a seasoned nitwit, fails to see the connection. Let me explain. Clearly, as the Ramayana points out, North Indians are real men and South Indians are monkeys. Thus, the theory of evolution implies that North Indians came from South Indians, a proposition offensive to both parties. If brown people had any brains, they should see red, cry foul and let slip the dogs of war. Instead, they blithely sing hosannas to Charlie Darwin in 50-word answers to 3-mark questions. Has there ever been, I demand to know, a race more credulous or more laughable?
One might say that expecting brown people to understand myth is as unfair as expecting them to use condoms. After all, it is not without reason that brown people have been subjugated. The white man, on the other hand, is not a subjugatee but a subjugater. From him, we have come to expect better. Is he not the inventor of the highly unintuitive toilet paper, and its essential accompaniments, eau-de-cologne and the remarkable Scabex ointment which guarantees instant relief from painful sores in private parts? Indeed, as the Scabex promos proudly proclaim:
If your backside is all a-boil,
Don't simply hose it with oil.
Stick some Scabex up yo' ass,
'N walk again with some class.
To the refined white superbrain that developed these and many more wonders, myth, one would expect, is but child's play.
Alas, even the princely race of white men diasppoints, when in comes to interpreting myth. Consider that deeply symbolic tale of the fall of Man. The popular belief is that the first man and his missus were sauntering along the beachfront property that God had allotted them, when they came across Satan in the form of a serpent. You, gentle reader, are a real man. On seeing a snake, you would have smashed its head, fleeced its skin, and had shoes made for your mistress. Instead, the first man stupidly chose to leave the snake alive. On the other hand, the first woman did exactly what your wife does to every new reptile on the block: she talked to it. (As I have always maintained, only one gender in this species seems to be evolving.) Thereupon the snake convinced the first frau to bite off the Fruit of Knowledge, which is widely believed to have been an apple. In spite of God giving them express instructions to keep their hands off the said produce, Mr and Mrs Uno took a bite. Thereby they realized in stages that they were
(1) ugly,
(2) nangoo, and
(3) screwed.
This popular belief is, as always, exceedingly childish. The logical fallacies are numerous and egregious. For instance, we have reason to believe that God, for all his faults, is not a frigging vegan. If He went to the trouble of making a Tree of Knowledge, wouldn't He make it bear mangoes or jackfruit or some such respectable thing instead of God-forsaken apples?
And then there is the glaring fact that there is no Horse in the story of the Fall. As anyone who has followed the Aryan invasion debate knows, the role of the Horse is pivotal. A theory without a Horse is no theory at all, but merely a pseudo-secular far-left opinion, a piece of vile anti-national Chinese-sponsored propaganda.
Clearly, the popular understanding of the Fall is a pile of horse-manure. Fortunately, intelligent people can see past popular belief into the real meaning of things.
My comrade and partner-in-crime P~, for one, offers a very original and off-beat interpretation of the story of man's fall here. P~'s interpretation, which I encourage the reader to read, is highly profound. Unfortunately, it is also wrong.
First, P~'s story has no horse either.
Second, P~ implies that there really is no such thing as Evil on earth. He obviously hasn't met enough Tamil people.
Third, he naively tries to make everybody look good in the story of the Fall. While that is charming, it is highly unrealistic. Even in regular fairytales, where the author has license to dream, you usually get one good person, at best two. Clearly, even those in the fantasy business know that fantasy should be tempered with realism. In P~'s story, on the other hand, 4 different individuals--Senor God, Senor Uno, Senora Uno and Senor Sssss--are good. Tell me, gentle reader: Talking man to man, of all the people that you know, does not everyone except you strike you as a rather villainous serial rapist? Where, then, can this fantastic assemblage of four good individuals be found, except in P~'s ultra left-wing liberal mind?
Do not get me wrong: P~ is a frightfully intellectual bloke, who always keeps bothering himself about the Human Condition, as if it were a tooth about to fall. But the trouble with P~ is that for all his brains, he has no prior experience in busting well-entrenched myths. Your humble correspondent, on the other hand, is a past master at busting w.-e. myths.
Brownistan's greatest myth of the 1990s was that our class topper G~ was unbeatable in power systems. However, in the heady summer of 1998, one handsome lad outscored G~ in not one, but two, consecutive Power Systems quizzes. If P~ had been that lad, I would have bowed to him, kissed the ground beneath his feet and accepted his interpretation of the Fall of Man. As it turns out, that giant-slaying lad was not P~, but yours truly. Having thus proved my worth for once and forever, I exercise my right to call P~ wrong. Instead, I will give a parallel interpretation of the Fall in one of my posts, whenever the mood takes me.
Till then, gentle reader, amuse yourself with harmless pleasures. Covet your neighbor's wife if you like, but kindly covet from a distance.
Pip-pip.
5 comments:
>>Forms deceive us and lead us to perceive the Many where there is but the One.
Finally, someone understands.
*reads further, understands that he might have been called a nincompoop and a seasoned nitwit, and returns to peacefully coveting neighbour's wife*
comrade theone,
i read your blog. you are unqualified to be the common man, so nincompoop doesn't apply to you. seasoned nitwit, i'm afraid, still does. you did, after all, read this blog, didn't you?
Yessir, guilty as charged. Nitwit it shall be.
Are these Changes one observes? The old title, it must be said, evoked altogether more pleasant visuals .. but this does pack a lot more personality.
Updates please. And can we have something more comprehensible? :-P.
-The enterprising gujju.
"theone" : yup changes they are. for the nonce at least.
"thedq" : i don't speak no gujju. will try.
saale old boy,
delighted, i must say, to hear from you after all these years. You raise valid concerns. touche', but whatever happened to good old-fashioned Hello?
Anyway, if you find a word that means "arguably not unattractive to self-absorbed women whose desperation for notes outweighs their taste in men", I'll be glad to put it in. Till then, handsome will have to do. brevity, my boy, is of the essence.
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