On the edge of perception Four horsemen ride at the whim of those whose acts are dutiless. The invisible hand prevaricates: Nothing trickles down. Decay at the source. Inevitable outcome. At the root of all evil is the love of m o n e y .
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Very nice, Pendantry!
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Thanks, Gail :)
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P.S. Thanks for pointing me to this video on your YouTube channel. I needed a good laugh! When he started on about the Pope talking about money being the root of all evil I thought: wait, what?
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Well written about a topic so true. Excellent poem, and a great way to present it visually.
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Why, thank you, kind sir!
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You’re very welcome.
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Hmmm…I always thought the root of all evil was vanity…but we all have our own devils, I suppose
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Don’t know about vanity. But a friend of mine pointed out to me recently that while most people (apart from you) misquote it as ‘money is the root of all evil’, the actual quote comes from the Bible, Timothy 6:10; and it’s not money itself that’s the root of the evil, it’s the love of money that’s the problem. Though I’m not a fan of the ‘good book’ myself, this quote does seem, to me, to be particularly apt in these times of economies being rocked to their cores by thieves and villains, pretending to be good guys, in positions of power.
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Interesting interview on npr yesterday with the author of a book drawing distinctions between farmer/shepherd as depicted in the bible:
“Cain and Abel — they’re the first human beings that we’re told have any kind of jobs. Cain is a farmer and Abel’s a shepherd. And it turns out that this long, long narrative from Genesis to Kings, over and over again, presents people either as shepherds or as farmers. And in fact there’s a whole history of conflict between them. So, all the greatest heroes in the Bible — Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David and many others — they’re all shepherds. And it’s not just that they happen to be shepherds, because the Bible emphasizes the time they spent shepherding and what they learned from it. And this is kind of like a code — I mean, not a secret code, but it’s a metaphor — the shepherd stands for people who live outside of society, on the hills. They make law for themselves, they seek God for themselves, and they’re autonomous. It’s almost an anarchical message.
“The farmer represents the great urban agrarian societies on the huge rivers in Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, Persia. And the farming societies are what we would recognize today as kind of a totalitarian society, meaning that the king made the decisions, he spoke for the gods, he paid the priests. And these were societies, of course, that had virtues, but the virtues of farming society, of these great empires, were virtues like piety, submissiveness, obedience, honoring the government, honoring your father and your mother, keeping the system going. The shepherds were people who lived beyond society. And the funny thing is that the Hebrew Bible is one very complicated, sophisticated document which holds up the shepherds as being the heroes.”
http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160388922/an-individualist-approach-to-the-hebrew-bible
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That’s extremely interesting. Thank you for taking the time to share that, Gail.
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I can’t believe I didn’t “Like” this at the time. Thanks for the reminder.
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Thanks for the ‘like’.
On a slightly more controversial note: Well, yes, hmmm… some people (such as yourself) clearly consider the ‘front page’ of blogs and other ‘net media as being ‘current news’, with older articles clearly not worth considering simply on the grounds of the item’s age. (In fact I recall that on more than one occasion you have graciously acknowledged my presence on old threads — in various fora — in a manner that suggests I’m somehow ‘late to the party’). Such an attitude might be prevalent with those who grew up with the ‘traditional’ print media — and understandably so: much of today’s media ‘news’ is simply throwaway trash by design, destined for the bin almost as soon as it’s penned. This, I feel, is yet another symptom of what is so wrong with traditional media: because they are built around the standard business ‘growth’ model, they attempt to ensure continual growth by deliberately building in obsolescence.
Other people (such as me) recognise that simply because content was written in some dim, distant past does not, in and of itself, necessarily mean that it is no longer relevant. Newton’s 300-and-some year old law of universal gravitation springs to mind: just because it’s old doesn’t mean it can be ignored. But in today’s society I’m clearly the one who’s out of touch: after all, I still think it’s not just insane but arguably criminal to constantly upgrade gadgets simply because a new one comes out. But then, I, very early on, bought into the idea that those who drive while using a ‘cell-phone’ are driving dangerously (and was ridiculed at the time)… YMMV.
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Sorry if I have given that impression. I know that Paul often says to me that blog posts are very ephemeral. However, I remain hopeful that everything I have ever written may remain useful to someone (searching for something specific) until such time as it may be superseded by advances in human knowledge. A the moment, however, we are mainly just pushing back the frontiers of human ignorance instead.
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Facebook is ephemeral (by design). Blogs can be; I’ve always tried hard to ensure that whatever blog posts I create will have some longevity, even if only as entertainment value (please do pick a random wibblet and judge for yourself). FWIW I think that Lack of Environment succeeds in that aim too.
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Reading the above poem (excellent BTW) and then reading the comments below makes me coming here and posting a comment all the more relevant. Do you ever repost what you’ve previously written? I’m kicking it around to give re-birth/greater attention to stuff I’ve written before when I had less of a voice.
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No, I never repost my own content. What I do instead (and it quite often happens) is find some reason to add further thoughts developing something that’s gone before, and then link back to the old content.
Consider my ‘bonsai diary‘ here on Wibble (a theme that in recent years has been neglected due to more pressing issues). Most of my little trees are still thriving (I have less than a handful, so looking after them isn’t onerous). In fact I have two posts in mind for that thread (though there never seems to be enough time to do everything). I need to mourn the loss of the little apple, which didn’t make it. And I need to write a follow-up to Aesculus Hippocastanum, because I understand that things have moved on, and it’s now thought that Cameria Ohridella is now a real threat to the UK’s horse chestnut trees (possibly because they are suffering from pollution stress — Gail at Wit’s End would probably tell me the problem is low level ozone, and I daresay she’s not wrong).
Just my tuppence; but I see little point in reworking old material unless it needs to be updated so as not to confuse/ mislead. It’s a flaw in the basic nature of the world wide web that old content is rarely conserved properly. I’ve no doubt there’s content on Wibble that falls into that category… for instance, I noticed a dead link on one post here recently, but neglected to fix it at the time, or even note where it was :( I don’t think that WordPress has a ‘link sanity checker’… ?
PS I’m glad you liked the poem :)
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A follow-up: It’s no longer true that I don’t repost content. I’ve done that a few times recently, though when I have I’ve always found something extra to add (my latest innovation here is to add transcripts to selected videos, as I’ve done in my most recent post, for instance). But I do still firmly believe that a blog is best thought of as a tapestry rather than a set of loose threads, and I try wherever possible, using links, to weave the threads together.
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Nice concrete poem, Pendantry!
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Thank you!
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