Words to remember

[aadler]

 
When I look at how things are going in this country right now, one of my favorite poems seems more than ever pertinent.

Preliminary explanation from this site (the highlighting is mine):

A copybook was an exercise book used to practice one’s handwriting in. The pages were blank except for horizontal rulings and a printed specimen of perfect handwriting at the top. You were supposed to copy this specimen all down the page. The specimens were proverbs or quotations, or little commonplace hortatory or admonitory sayings — the ones in the poem illustrate the kind of thing. These were the copybook headings.

(It can also be noted that when Kipling refers to “the Gods of the Market Place”, he seems to mean, not specific economic principles — our current understanding of the Market — but the fads that come and go in every age.)

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations
     in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations
     to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers,
     I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings,
     I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us.
     They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us,
     as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift,
     Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas
     while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed.
     They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne
     like the Gods of the Market Place;
But they always caught up with our progress,
     and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield,
     or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on
     they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton;
     they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses;
     they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market,
     Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming,
     They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons,
     that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed, They sold us
     and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
     said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones,
     we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour
     and ended by loving his wife),
Till our women had no more children,
     and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
     said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch
     we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter
     to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money,
     there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
     said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled,
     and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled,
     and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters,
     and Two and Two make Four —
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings
     limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future,
     it was at the birth of Man —
There are only four things certain
     since Social Progress began: —
That the Dog returns to his Vomit,
     and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger
     goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished,
     and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing
     and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us,
     as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
     with terror and slaughter return!

Someone once made a statement to the effect that “reality is what doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it”. Reality is what reasserts itself when the various fads collapse under their own lack of substance.

We’re in a national fad right now. I hope the collapse — when it comes, and it IS coming — won’t be too terrible.

Comments

[izhilzha.livejournal.com]

If we're in a national fad right now, it's a different one from the national fad we were in for the past decade (at least), which was living on credit and not paying attention to what we did with our money. At least that fad has already collapsed, or is well on its way.

[aadler]

And it very well needed to collapse. The problem I see is that those days are being presented as a time of prosperity (rather than the unsustainable misuse of prosperity), with expanding government control the prescribed remedy to return us to something that couldn’t have continued regardless.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

This could be the best thing to happen to us, if we survive it -- America has needed a wake up call for a long time. The problem is, it's incredibly difficult to get rid of government programs and interference once they're set up, and we've got four long years in which a lot of damage can be done.

[aadler]

A lot of damage, absolutely. Months ago I expressed fear that an Obama presidency would — through perceived weakness, whether or not those perceptions were accurate — increase the likelihood of me being killed during my coming deployment. That doesn’t worry me now (Iraq has been stabilized to a near-miraculous degree, this will probably be my LEAST dangerous ‘combat’ tour) … but I’m seriously concerned as to whether America will still be here when it’s time for me to return, or if it will be the brave new socialist paradise the American Left has been dreaming of for the last seventy years.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

Yes, but a perceived weakness in our government could cause the various bad guys to work up their courage and start causing problems over there again -- kind of like North Korea and other countries started up their sabre rattling again after Congress saw the political opportunity and began opposing Bush. I'm very concerned that various terrorists and dictators will take this opportunity to make the lives of our servicemen a lot harder in the future.

[aadler]

I do anticipate something like that with foreboding, yes. Even so, the very real fear I felt has been mitigated, so that what happens to my country in my absence is a more immediate concern to me.

[ozma914.livejournal.com]

I can't argue with you on that one ... we can hope the Dems lose a bit during the midterm elections, but we've got a long, dangerous four years ahead of us.

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

I think I'm going to get a lot of use out of that definition of reality. Fits well with a number of people I argue religion with.