Top Marks

In University, Karl Marx's Political Economics professor noted that every day, the young man would get up halfway through class and walk out. One day, as Marx stood up to leave, the professor stopped lecturing and turned to him.
"I am curious, Mr. Marx, what it is about my teaching you find so intolerable that you cannot sit through more than half of any given lecture?"
"Oh, no, sir, it's nothing like that," said the young Marx. "I have a class on 'Proletariat ideology' that starts in five minutes and I'll be dropped from the course if I'm late."
The professor was confused. "You mean to tell me that the University registered you for two courses at the same time?"
"Yes, sir," Marx responded. "It's a class conflict."

The Misunderstanding

The sense of constantly living in a state of exile produces a profound skepticism or distrust in the myths and universal systems of belief which are alleged to give meaning and purpose to existence but in fact devalue and even negate it.

Survivor

Everyday,
I think about dying.
About disease, starvation,
violence, terrorism, war,
the end of the world.
It helps
keep my mind off things.

Survivor by Roger McGough

Across The Road And Into The Trees

Across from the house, to the right, there is a cemetery.
Every morning, I open the curtains and look out at it. Often you can see the sun shining back through the oak and chestnut trees.
As far as neighbours go, the residents are pretty quiet. They don't make any fuss, not anymore, all sound and fury spent.
The other day, a new one arrived. I watched as a small crowd gather, huddle, then disperse. One last person lingered, then turned his collar up and pulled his hat down and walked slowly away.
Every night, I close my curtains looking out across the darkness, checking for any movement in the shadows. Just in case. Zombies and vampires and mummies and all that.

And one day, hopefully not too soon, I may be looking back the other way.

Escape Entertainment

"Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything..." said Cioran.

Adorno said that we prefer to spend our limited free time on relaxing from the demands we place on ourselves and escaping the pressures of the everyday world consuming popular culture. Escape entertainment. As such, we become the willing consumers and reproducers of our own alienation by becoming consumers rather than producers of culture.

“If our condition were truly happy,” said Pascal, “we should not need to divert ourselves from thinking about it.”

My head hurts. Time for a beer and a bit of telly.

The Game Of Life Is Hard To Play

If life is meaningless and living is suffering then why do we put up with the futility of suffering?

I don't know.
But perhaps I should stop reading Camus.