Apathetic Apologetic Anesthetic

"He has strangled his language in tears" -Shakespeare Henry VIII
As the years of my life pass a feeling of acceptance settles into my consciousness. I never thought that one day it would be possible for me to acquiesce to such absurdities as this world consists of, but it seems to be happening. More than once people would respond to my diatribes and discourse with a far off look in their eyes, followed by some paraphrasing of 'you will grow out of it'. It never once occurred to me that they might be right, that my passion too would be subsumed by acceptance. There was a point where the more I learned about human behavior and history the more I felt certain that there was no way for me to live passively in such a situation, yet here I am, almost 30 and becoming benumbed.

Such seems to be a common occurrence among us moderns. If anything is killing humanity it is surely apathy. Not exactly a new development, really been just amplified by there being more people on the planet. Positioned by fate as I am, the view from these eyes has witnessed a level of abject indifference that seemingly has no limit. I used to think this was something refered to as doublethink (see this entry) but have now concluded it comes from a lack of precision diction. People can't express themselves, so they can't think clearly, so no ones says anything and shit just rambles on like a drunk hobo looking for a train. You can't question without a quest, so I think this one shall be mine for a time. Language is the coolest thing we have going for us, regardless of which you use. Yet it seems all too common in my ears to hear people trudge painfully through a sentence with words that fail to satisfy. Orwell commented on English being in a bad way over half a century ago, and this tongue has only gotten more tongue tied (ankyloglossia amnesia I shall call it). The lingo isn't fit for a dingo, and yet this shit spreads over the world and the seven seas like a damn disease. Maybe we tried to build the tower of babel and comedian Creator had to have the last joke, so in our brains he blew a shitload of smoke.
To be fair, I must concede that if you look over the my 230 posts you'll find I'm writing a pretty gargantuan amount of bullshit, but at least I expressed myself. It is incomprehensible to me that some people these days probably go their whole lives without ever being able to properly portray what they thought on any given day. What a fucking temporal tragedy to me. But in this world of starvation, drones, shopping malls, strip mines, wind chimes and crazy rhymes I suppose that's just the way she goes...

Nomads

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule." -Nietzsche 
For the past few months I've been reading an epic historical work called 'Empire of the Steppes' which covers several thousand years of nomadic migrations. I'll spare you the pages of notes I've taken documenting the rise and fall of innumerable empires and even more incalculable wars; I fully recognize that such things interest few people. What I thought would be interesting to most people is the authors defense of nomadic barbarity towards sedentary people. After recounting the staggeringly violent life of Ghengis Khan she says he did none of it out of cruelty or anger. It was the result of a fundamentally different point of view. One that saw cities and agriculture as an opposing way of life, one that bred weakness, decadence and slavery.
 City after city, empire after empire, fell to the horde of the great Khan, and all were burned and slaughtered if they resisted, which most did. If not for the intervention of one of his advisers it is probable that he would have had his troops kill the entire population of Northern China, burn the cities, destroy the irrigation system, and let the whole area revert to its natural state; which is exactly what he had done to Eastern Iran. This foreign policy seems ruthless beyond understanding but we must remember that virtually every empire he conquered started the war, he just finished it with a decisiveness no one was ready for. Often they would ride away from a ravaged area long enough for those who had hidden to come out, only to have a rear guard return to finish the rest off.
 While reading about these tumultuous times I found my mind wondering if this seemingly irresistible human tendency towards killing on a large scale was all motivated by the same thing- ignorance of the other.
The nomadic hordes of Temujin were more cunning and effective than brave. Their tactics and weapons almost always ensured they suffered very few casualties relative to what they inflicted. Through discipline and experience they were able to trick enemies into doing exactly what they wanted and when the moment was right they would destroy the opposing army in its entirety.  When America sends our soldiers, pilots and robots to kill in the exact same areas that the Mongol horsemen once rode we do it in a similar way. Our weapons and tactics make us largely invulnerable to our foes and our strategy seems to our enemies to not go beyond death and domination. Also like the hordes of the great Khan, we travel far from our homes to wage war upon people whose way of life we are incapable of understanding. As complex, populated and technologically advanced our way of life is, at our core we seem to have not changed at all.