Virtue in motion
I was told to walk away from my soul,
to go off by myself, to live in a hole.
“The hole is for filling with treasures, gold.
Proof of a life, living so bold.
Filled to the top, by the time you are old.”
They would preach this with obvious distress
Directed towards me, the one they address.
“I can see by the look in your eye,
You’re sharp and witty, could be one hell of a guy.
Get on a path and give it your all,
Show what you’re working with, answer the call.”
I would sit still-ly, my face in a scowl.
The call I hear is Diogenes, so I give them a growl.
You see my dear teachers, as sweet as can be,
your lessons can never, will never penetrate me.
For you’re all unhappy, as modern day slaves
Ideologies that daily plant you into your graves.
Before you are dead, you are long tired and buried
Selfish, artificial, abstract thinking to which you are married.
Told to “take a path,” I stare distant and vexed,
I follow The Way, I need not know what’s next.
The look on their face is always the same,
Upset by the reputation I attempt to defame.
“Look, we are experienced and we really care.
Follow our advice to avoid all despair.
This life needn’t be so challenging and hard,
Work hard, get paid, be genuine never a fraud.
Write down your goals and you’ll make due.
Daily make lists and check boxes when through.
The world is your oyster, yours for the taking,
Find the land, plant your flag, so you’ll have a stake in
The game that we play is easy, called Life,
Do’s and don’ts which will keep you from strife.”
Oh my dear teachers, as sweet as can be,
Still your lessons miss their mark within me.
Life shouldn’t be easy, we evolved with the pain
The circuits are starved within your withering brain.
Challenge, adversity, failure, is all that I ask,
So that happiness may come from the Sun that I bask.
I grow most from the lessons I learn in deprivation,
Without sleep, Without food, Without words and thoughts
I reset my station.
The plane of life, on that which I live,
Feeling the gifts of nature, All that she gives.
Letting the moment run through you, like water in sieve.
“Oh, poor boy!” They exclaim most direct.
“You’re not Eastern, so what of this affect?
Here we believe in ethics and science,
to which we hold a faithful alliance.
Lean, trim, effective. The best that one can get,
Our methods are the ones in which to hedge your bet.
Modern and fit, empirically proven.
Confirmation, confirmation, keeps the cycle moving.
Why such resistance, petty and small?
Such a bright, clever boy. Don’t you want it all?”
Oh my loving teachers, as sweet as can be,
My bet is hedged, to a wonderful tree.
You’re science is great, even that I confess,
but of matters of men, your pseudo, at best.
You invent certain kinds of men, such that you may study.
Faithful to each other, academics truths’ get muddy.
Your knowledge is narrowed to barely a drop,
limiting associative connections, education a flop.
To be able to connect the pieces so grand,
On the backs of giants, platitudes to stand.
Artists scream the truths within each generation,
Undoing the shackles of modern stagnation.
You turn to Gauss, much out of turn,
Forgetting Solon, Carneades. Popper, even Chuang-tse would warn,
Of this degradation to all of men’s souls,
Within the culture, forgetting our roles.
To one another, to our tribe we owe dues,
Brain-drain turning tribes into zoos.
Angry, protective, territorial, animals live to old age,
Proclaiming loudly, “From my book take a page!”
“React to protect, aggression is the defense,
Evil and different, we must take offense.
To their wrong doings, no matter the cause,
An initial attack for self-defense, we mustn’t take pause.”
This is the price we pay for our hedonist greed,
Evil took root from the neglected seed.
We uproot from our tribes, seeking wealth and validation,
Vacuums and clustering, a republic’s castration.
Blah blah blah, etc. You get the point.
