All Human Thought Is Anecdotal and Subjective (Just as It Should Be)
Audio = Stream from the bar; download from the dots
05/17/1991
Summary = See below
Condensed News Items = See below
News Item Gallery = jcap 1990-12-19 -0817
Transcript = None
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Summary
#817 May 17, 1991 – 1:00
Notes by TK
Kyroot to :15. There is no art w/o talk. No man can be an expert on himself, a critic, w/o talking about himself. No man can offer an opinion on anything w/o talking about, telling about himself. W/o commenting on himself, no man can comment on anything. W/o having an opinion of himself no man has an opinion on anything. All human thought, knowledge is anecdotal, hence subjective, self-centered, unstable, unreliable and meaningless – just as it should be.
Consider modern primate language studies where, in laboratory experiments chimps seem to have acquired almost-human language skills. Consider: is there a difference between “natural” abilities and acquired abilities? What might then be possible with extraordinary means of instruction? Ordinary intellect holds up as a model of such potentials, the unsophisticated, barely literate, dirty, feral “noble savage”.
This is the model that modern (ordinary) man should emulate: e.g., the ecological consciousness of primitive tribes (while disregarding their shortened life spans and general inability to be anything but ecologically efficient). Such is the natural response of the ordinary intellect to the pressures of growth: look to the past.
The News
12/19/90
Copyright 1990 J. M. Cox
…and Kyroot said:
After five minutes, a lot of history gets boring.
* * *
Everything that offers two choices offers no choices.
…(Three ain’t much better, unless you’re new in town.)
* * *
There’s this one guy who tries not to upset people, for what
he says is “very good reason,” although he goes on to admit that
it can’t be proven either way.
* * *
(Something you probably wouldn’t wanna think about unless
you were the kind of person who liked to think about something
like this): Only the necessary needs to be justified; all else,
even the ordinary can let pass.
* * *
If you frighten enough people, you can frighten yourself.
* * *
Although he continued to insist there were no prizes,
whenever this one god would announce a contest, damn-near
everybody showed up.
* * *
One man says that if he ever writes a book, he’ll put a
title on it.
* * *
From about his fortieth year on, when the king would make
his grand annual entrance into the city on his birthday, he would
declare, “My friends, when you see me, you see your own
future,” and this would unfailingly cause a distinct ripple to
run throughout the populace. (To describe it in any more detail
would be most difficult.)
* * *
Save the price of testing and counseling — if you’re a
psychological, you’ve got psychological problems.
* * *
Said one ole man to one kid, “Just periodically playing
partially dissonant chords won’t make you a jazz musician, or a
modern composer,” and the lad asked, “Then what will?” but it
being such a nice day and all, he decided not to reply.
* * *
More super-safe bets for the city’s mental track: Anyone
who tries to figure out what life’s all about, and who tells
you of their efforts — won’t ever.
* * *
Civilization is non-tangible order, and the hunger for such
order is the mind’s contribution to new instincts.
* * *
Although many of the collateral ideas were notified of the
meeting, few of them cared to show up where they knew the doors
could be locked, and weapons drawn.
* * *
While they were sitting up in a tree, the old man punched
the kid on the arm and said, “Look here, whenever you hear some
real whiny voice say, ‘better late than never’ — there ain’t no
need to check your watch.” …(Some of the lower limbs groaned
under the weight of this wisdom.)
* * *
Only the tangible, external rebels in the city babble on
about how the revolution must never stop; the truly subversive
have no cause to comment on the necessity for breath.
* * *
One guy compiled a list of people.
* * *
In that place in the city some call “The Confidential Area,”
a guy confided to me, “The hardest thing about being a genius
is in nobody else realizing it.” (The city had a reply which I
don’t consider fit to repeat.)
* * *
No matter where your mama’s from — everybody bears some
resemblance to the king.
* * *
During a lull in the proceedings, the proceedings said,
“Where the hell’d that lull come from?”
* * *
In a far galactic corner, in a deconstructed, neo-fern bar,
this one god said to his bud, “I still think one of the best
things about being a god is you don’t have to put up with all
that stuff about fuckin’ ‘role models.'”
* * *
Today’s civilization report from one kingdom: “Such an
overnight chill swept over the land that many ideas and opinions
were frozen.”
* * *
A man with an illegal weapon and a handwritten manuscript on
The Unconscious Eroticism Of Elizabethan Verse should be
arrested on one charge or the other.
* * *
If you wait for someone else to tell you “you’re history” —
you’re history!
* * *
In what purports to be a secret, regal diary found in some
other reality are these words (on page 65): “Although the king
can go anywhere, part of the fun in being king is that you
don’t want to go anywhere.” …(You might care to note: by
page 80, the word “suicide” began to appear.)
* * *
Whenever he was in a foreign city, the first thing this one
guy’d do after checking into his hotel was rush to his room, call
room service, and ask if he could have his tongue cleaned and
pressed after nine p.m.
* * *
A fellow who lived over near some noise would attempt to
cheer up his sister by reminding her that everyone had a hide-out
but god.
* * *
His helpful instincts apparently overtaking him, this one
fellow says that if you count your problems, you’ll have more.
…(I sort of thanked him on your behalf.)
* * *
After it was all over and everyone had left, he looked
himself up and down and thought, “Well, I can’t say this is the
first time it’s ever happened.”
* * *
The health conscious should not get in the way of a man
attempting to break into prison.
* * *
One ole guy over in the city’s H-Sector said, “I used to
have fun and then feel guilty; then I started having fun by
feeling guilty, and now…well, now I just wonder what the late
movie’s gonna be.”
* * *
Just before the light changed, the man in the hearty blue
overcoat turned my way and said that he always tried to operate
on the assumption that there were more aspects involved than he
could routinely perceive.
* * *
A certain seditiously inclined ole man said to his (quote)
“gullible — I mean — receptive kid” (unquote), “Only sissies
die. …Okay, only sissies’ll say they’re dead.”
* * *
One of the king’s frontal lobes (which are sometimes kind of
like scale models of a revolutionist’s) said, “One of the nice
aspects of my position in the intellectual food chain is that I
will never be handed the check.”
* * *
Everyone has a hole in their shoe. If you didn’t live in
the city you wouldn’t even have shoes. Everyone you know now
lives in the city. Everyone who lives in the city has a hole in
their shoe. …(The jungle is the source of supper, the city, of
justice.)
* * *
A viewer writes to say that he notices we haven’t had any
letters from viewers on tonight’s show.
* * *
Whenever his thinking seemed to be getting out of control,
this one man would leap to his feet, blow a whistle and shout,
“Icing — Off Sides — Balk!” …(He said he thought it gave his
intellectual activities an additional macho aura.)
* * *
One guy’s sarcasm finally extended so far beyond any
recognizable boundaries that no one any longer noticed it, and he
was, in fact, taken to be quite understanding and compassionate.
…(Over in another reality he started a well known religion.)
* * *
As he watched the squirrels pretend they weren’t watching
him, one rebel thought, “Metaphors that aren’t suicidal are no
friends of mine.” …(One North American Red appeared to have
tossed him a nut.)
* * *
His “September Theory,” as he called it, was that if you
unfailingly refer to yourself in the third person, you’ll go away.
* * *
Periodically, this one god would offer his creatures actual
choices, but they’d always say, “Hey, we ain’t givin’ up
nuthin, see!”
* * *
When they get nervous, some men begin to babble; others get
nervous.
* * *
Saying that he’d had a “belly full” of the arguments over
certain city problems, this one mayor declared, “Let those who
make the garbage eat the garbage.” …(Several of his
advisors felt they would all live to regret this decision.)
* * *
One aging ole sorehead whined (over at last Saturday’s Whine
Fest), “When diverse data begins to agree, what chance has a poor
mortal?” …(Calendar note: At next week’s get-together they’re
going to hold the three-legged race using only two of whatever
they’ve got.)
* * *
Well, a viewer finally did write in, and what he had to say
was in reference to an earlier Kyroot which noted that, “After
five minutes, a lot of history gets boring,” and he wants to know
— “Five minutes after what?” …(You know, I’s afraid some
smart-ass wiff a pencil’d say that.)
* * *
Yet another way to tell that a civilization is properly
active and expanding is that even those involved in totally
irrelevant affairs have to hustle for business.
* * *
Since it was almost eleven-thirty, the ole man decided it
was last chance time for some advice for the day. So he told the
kid, “Son, whenever you’re inclined to be annoyed by someone
else’s ideas, just remember that their hobby could’ve been to rob
and pistol-whip you.”
* * *
In every city there is a foreman in charge of the people’s
intellectual development, but, as is so often the case with union
employees, they don’t know what they’re doing.
* * *
At the beginning of each new season the king would have the
Minister Of Executions officially announce, “There will be no
pardons for those who can think.” (And, curiously unbeknownst,
there were always a few citizens encouraged by this news.)
* * *
One of the continuing trick shots of the subversive’s pivot
position is not to dislike those who deserve it — not to dislike
even those who should be disliked, and not even to dislike
those whom you do dislike.
* * *
At the topless theory club where some of the assistant
deities hang out during their down time, one of them (after
noting that he didn’t reckon a little “insider’s info” could hurt
anything) said that when you’re trying to calculate how life
works, always figure in the Oodle Factor. …(He says he knows
you’ve never heard of it and don’t know what it means, but he
says to tell you that it’s pretty easy to figure out.)
* * *
Just because you don’t know what you’re doing, doesn’t
mean Life doesn’t know what it’s doing.
* * *
One hotter than average neuron stood tall and called out,
“Listen to me, we can have order and security if you will but
forego freedom,” (and several of the smaller synapses thought,
“Say, haven’t we heard this before — out there?”)
* * *
All of history and civilized battlefields revisited:
“Courage,” he said, and pointed to his head.
* * *