Large Fierce Mammal

The world is at war. With everything. The world of humans strives for unbridled growth, and in so doing either sheds all care, or cooks up justifications for its extravagance, to the peril of everything that isn’t us. Religion is still being used as a reason to kill everyone else who doesn’t belong to “the chosen”. You see, widely differing systems of belief can coexist perfectly until one finds an interpretation of its sacred texts that names it “chosen”, so that any horror may now be visited upon non-believers, not only free from all otherworldly retribution, but actually with all imaginable heavenly encouragement. So called “extremist” Islam is the demon of the moment, but history shows this to be little more than flavour of the month.

But War is only one among the Four Horsemen. There is another, named Pestilence (Plague to his closer friends, although he always claims that to be too limiting and one dimensional, for he rides anything but a one trick pony), who now reminds us that his arm is long, and his sense of humour limitless.

You all know that of which I speak. Those given the loudest voice harangue the throng to look here to the greatest threat, and now there to the other greatest threat, as the cycle continues. I offer no solace but the words of the ever so Esteemed Master at Arms James Keating – “Be trained or be chained”. And there are many kinds of chain, from the one that keeps you pressing your knees together outside a vacant opposite sex washroom while the one matching your own is occupied, to the literal kind. Train, Good Reader, to think and act for yourself so that when the conjurer encourages you to look here, here is the last place you look.

You probably know Terence Hanbury White better by his customary nom de plume, T. H. White, author of the Arthurian romance collection first published in 1958 as The Once and Future King. What follows, for your day’s meditation, are two passages from The Book of Merlyn: The Unpublished Conclusion to The Once & Future King:

“We find that at present the human race is divided into one wise man, nine knaves, and ninety fools out of every hundred. That is, by an optimistic observer. The nine knaves assemble themselves under the banner of the most knavish among them, and become ‘politicians’; the wise man stands out, because he knows himself to be hopelessly outnumbered, and devotes himself to poetry, mathematics, or philosophy; while the ninety fools plod off under the banners of the nine villains, according to fancy, into the labyrinths of chicanery, malice and warfare. It is pleasant to have command, observes Sancho Panza, even over a flock of sheep, and that is why the politicians raise their banners. It is, moreover, the same thing for the sheep whatever the banner. If it is democracy, then the nine knaves will become members of parliament; if fascism, they will become party leaders; if communism, commissars. Nothing will be different, except the name. The fools will be still fools, the knaves still leaders, the results still exploitation. As for the wise man, his lot will be much the same under any ideology. Under democracy he will be encouraged to starve to death in a garret, under fascism he will be put in a concentration camp, under communism he will be liquidated.”

How familiar, with a little something for everybody. And then there’s this bit of irony:

“It is a pity that there are no big creatures to prey on humanity. If there were enough dragons and rocs, perhaps mankind would turn its might against them. Unfortunately man is preyed upon by microbes, which are too small to be appreciated.”

I suspect Pestilence has that printed on a plaque mounted on the wall behind his desk.