tue 05 may 2009 02:58:29 — witte de withstraat
was uitgenodigt
tonight i was very kindly invited out by dvr, one of my friends who agrees with me about some things, and disagrees with me about other things. we met at nachtwacht, a bit late, it was like ten in the evening. mg was there too, he will soon go to shanghai. later he said i should visit him in shanghai, which made me feel a bit like thora birch in that scene from "ghost world", when she says "yeah, that'll happen."
the three of us vehemently agreed that most of the current ills of nature are directly attributable to the superabundance (ie, plague) of humankind. but at the same time, he feels that extremism, radicalism and fundamentalism are all somehow not good things. and i think it's mainly because of how extreme, radical and fundamental have been portrayed in the common parlance. but i don't know for sure because he hasn't completely explained his point of view yet, and that's largely because he doesn't enjoy writing.
i can probably write this down better when i'm not tipsy.
in dutch, spoor means track or path, but it also means spore or seed. in dutch at least, there is a biological distinction between spoor and seed. i heard this from a polish man. but seed and spoor must be related ideas in NLs, why not in english? it could be so, why isn't it?
in dutch, we call some plants kruid (herb) and some onkruid (un-herb). and some pesky things are known as ongedierte (un-animals) even though they are obviously animals. so it seems the names are related to desirablilty. one recent twilight time, i was with jk and i suddenly turned ambtenaarachtig, a bureaucrat, a botanical fascist, and together we set about yanking up certain un-plants in the back garden. i looked up to ever loving george on the balcony, and said "george wat is dit, kruid of onkruid?" pointing to the plant that grows so stevig next to the porch. "onkruid!" george pronounced, and he oughta know, so i took the big giant clippers and hacked it. knowing (krishna like as i was) that it would never really die, really, because un-herbs are by nature indomitable. but then i'm also the guy who says krishna was dead wrong. and that arjuna never should have listened to the blue guy.
which makes me think about what i was saying last night.
why are those people so obsessed with life in the hereafter also so obsessed with life in the here and now? if on judgment day you'll get an oppty to explain why what you did in this world was so gericht op the next? then why would you care so much about whether the unbelievers in this world need to die now? it just doesn't make sense to me.
wouldn't it be much more useful if each of us, just as a thought-experiment, considered today, every day, as judgment day? i mean, why wait?
why not use now the faculty for moral discrimination that god presumably gave you? why wait for a hereafter if it matters now? by the same token, if the hereafter is so important, ie, if god's kingdom really is elsewhere and disparate to this life, then why bother hurting the people in this life at all? again, it can only be because you are an egomaniac, with no understanding of your true relationship with god.
ie: murderers listen up. collins calls you to get a fucking clue already.
maybe that's why my arguer and i can so vehemently disagree and agree at the same time. because both of us, being nice, don't want to hurt anybody, in fact we refuse to hurt anybody (as far as i can see). and yet we both agree that at least three or four billion have to die, and die soon, if the world is gonna survive.
i wonder how much of this self-contaevening thought is ambient now. how many people are there who, if they read that, would get it, but who are so caught up in the "let's reduce the loss of life" thing that they can't really admit it.
in the last five or six years, i myself have made a couple hundred thousand euros pretending that some people should live longer. in my filmmaking i mean. and in that context, it is truly a humane thing, and i love it. and i love the people who i wish would survive. and (as my own landlord recently tried to convince me) if i had to face the situtation of a loved one being hurt, i might hurt someone to protect her. but that doesn't solve the "is it right" question.
crikey. did this ever happen to mohandas ghandi? i doubt it. i don't think he ate steaks and drank beer.