Saturday 7 May 2011

Terence McKenna (16/11/46 - 3/4/00) - On societies refusal to allow us to be idle.


" I  think the reason we don't organise society in that way can be summed up in the aphorism, ' idle hands are the devil's tool. In other words, institutions fear idle populations because an idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that's almost a substitute word for idle, ' malcontent'. Essentially, we are all kept very busy... under no cicumstances are you to quietl inspect the contents of your own mind. Freud called introspection ' morbid' - unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, possibly neurotic, potentially pathological."

as transcribed to Tom Hodgkinson 1993.

as I've said before all life is work, in states of freedom we are released from the illusions of slavery.
Alternatively what was it that the great socialist William Morris say.

" A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it, is excercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as his body. Memory and imagination help him as he works."

Ah, the dualities of life, for some a struggle every day. Some of us refuse to obey or conform, we can look at a meadow of beauty for hours without moving. For some however this could be hard work. But everyone of us twined together in our fragility, lifes rich differences, the shared humanity of us all.
It is our ideologies that actually divide,the  reality is the toiler or the idle share  exactly the same breath.
All of us skirting around the playgrounds of chance, perhaps.
Anyway,I for one in deep thought at moment, wondering how the dickens the tories have not been decimated, but that  is another tale, one I'd rather forget. The thought of them, makes me very tired.

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