Rugged Comprehension
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Rugged Comprehension

Spring of 1980, Paris, France.

Have you ever noticed the inordinately intense desire for dignity the average adult exhibits? This poem examines that phenomenon as well as other indicees that tend to demonstrate that mankind as a whole is not quite as mature as necessary to be engaged in the levels of business, politics and war that are required by the demands of the modern existence into which we all have been thrust.

Rearing children with illusion and pretend existences hardly prepares them for the real world. When a man or woman, or a collective of them, throws a child's tantrum upon encountering the mildest hardship, it's not a pretty sight. Most of the frivolous litigation, much of the cook-the-books accounting, many of the dictatorial blood-baths, indicate that the perpetrators are mere children prancing around in adult form, with all it's accompanying faculties, but not the tempering necessary to make wise enough choices.

I've noticed in my world travels that everywhere the percentage of private farms to population in any given area is in fact extremely and inordinately low. I did a bit of investigation on the matter and one significant thing that came up was that the small family farmer contributes significantly to the financial success of a nation. It makes one wonder what kind of global morons are running them out of business. The country which does that I would liken to the character that shoots him or her self in the foot, but the analogy more appropriately would rather have to be the idiot who ended up shooting him or her self in the head.

And now we come to the bad part. The situation is getting progressively worse, and all because of this inane desire to dwell in a world of fantasy and denial. It looks like, barring some sort of miracle, mankind is headed for its total demise, along with most of the rest of the large mammals which probably will be dragged down by mankind along with them, by spoiled children in grown-up form.

Green fields, gray skies, windy cliffs on a mountain high.

Fool no child with imitation; you have got reality.

Life's for real, life is movement for eternity.

Yes, but if you move that little decimal one place left

on man's years' age,

You'll see the reason for the problem:

Man's just a child. He's not a sage.

Sunrise wind, cold and red; stormy clouds lift up their head.

Profit motives of corporate business drove the farmer out.

Now, that's the kind of childishness that I'm trying to warn you about.

And if you move that little decimal one place left on man's years' age,

you'll see the reason for the problem.