Wednesday, April 07, 2004
I had my first piano lesson today... Its pretty complicated. You have to have your hand in a special position all the time and do everything in a certain way blah blah. Cute Teacher Guy is nice. A fine arts student. He wanted the equivalent of $AU4 per lesson, what a nutter, because he know what he's doing and he's good. Now he thinks I'm a nutter for paying him $8. Whatever.
I had a stress attack this morning. I woke up comtemplating skipping both classes, then decided to go but get an extra half hour and come late. Oh that's right, I saw Passion of the Christ last night. It was boring, disgusting, and bitchy (towards those Jewish men who dragged him in). I was forced to go to scripture lessons in the secular school that was Epping Heights Primary, so I already know what happened - I've pretty much seen it all before. The only new stuff was the emphasis on the circumstances in which the Roman official agreed to the execution... only because the Jews manipulated the crowd and questioned his loyalty to the Caesar (chucking a Brutus). It was clear why there is so much controversy. The movie was substance-less except for that part and this is why so many people are questioning the motives for its being made. There was a bit of finger-pointing going on.
The thing is, right, that all this happened 2000 years ago, and by now, I think it would have reached the mythology stage. People are still fighting over stuff that they can't even be certain of now. And even so, what's the point? This is what history does to people.
Hence, I introduce my new tool for world peace. Its called the History Destroying Scheme*. Everyone gets fed an E. While everyone is hugging and making up, someone goes around changing all the titles of bibles etc to Myths from the Middle East and they get moved to the mythology section of the library. Then people get amnesia for a while. I don't know.
Then instead of reading the stories and totally relating to the people in them as if they were reading about themselves, they take it all with a grain of salt and think 'oh, maybe a long time ago one of my ancestors was one of those people, how cool' rather than 'how dare you say that that guy 2000 years ago was not the Messiah, he WAS!' 'No he wasn't, he hasn't come yet, shut up!' And instead they can study the supernatural charisma of assorted weirdos and its hunormous effect on gigantic parts of the world.
You know, 2000 years from now, people could be committing suicide every Sunday morning worshipping that cult leader who believed aliens were coming to pick them up anytime now and did a mass suicide with his followers. Everyone thinks he's a nutter now, but everyone could have thought Jesus and Muhammed were nutters back then too. Now look! People are waking up at four in the morning to read the books that may or may not have been written by a nutter and his fellow nuttees.
Think about Medusa. Maybe there was some chick who hated brushing her hair so it turned into dreadlocks. Then she refused to have sex with some a**hole, became totally persecuted beyond belief due to his powerful position, called a slut, people said her hair looked like snakes, and there you have it, history turned into myth. So would you go to war over what colour her hair was? Or whether she was born in a tree or a cave... It doesn't involve beliefs though so its neither a crispy nor delectable expample. But the drift is there and I get it.
*not an anarchist for all those imaginary government agents out there :-) ¶ 16:09
I had a stress attack this morning. I woke up comtemplating skipping both classes, then decided to go but get an extra half hour and come late. Oh that's right, I saw Passion of the Christ last night. It was boring, disgusting, and bitchy (towards those Jewish men who dragged him in). I was forced to go to scripture lessons in the secular school that was Epping Heights Primary, so I already know what happened - I've pretty much seen it all before. The only new stuff was the emphasis on the circumstances in which the Roman official agreed to the execution... only because the Jews manipulated the crowd and questioned his loyalty to the Caesar (chucking a Brutus). It was clear why there is so much controversy. The movie was substance-less except for that part and this is why so many people are questioning the motives for its being made. There was a bit of finger-pointing going on.
The thing is, right, that all this happened 2000 years ago, and by now, I think it would have reached the mythology stage. People are still fighting over stuff that they can't even be certain of now. And even so, what's the point? This is what history does to people.
Hence, I introduce my new tool for world peace. Its called the History Destroying Scheme*. Everyone gets fed an E. While everyone is hugging and making up, someone goes around changing all the titles of bibles etc to Myths from the Middle East and they get moved to the mythology section of the library. Then people get amnesia for a while. I don't know.
Then instead of reading the stories and totally relating to the people in them as if they were reading about themselves, they take it all with a grain of salt and think 'oh, maybe a long time ago one of my ancestors was one of those people, how cool' rather than 'how dare you say that that guy 2000 years ago was not the Messiah, he WAS!' 'No he wasn't, he hasn't come yet, shut up!' And instead they can study the supernatural charisma of assorted weirdos and its hunormous effect on gigantic parts of the world.
You know, 2000 years from now, people could be committing suicide every Sunday morning worshipping that cult leader who believed aliens were coming to pick them up anytime now and did a mass suicide with his followers. Everyone thinks he's a nutter now, but everyone could have thought Jesus and Muhammed were nutters back then too. Now look! People are waking up at four in the morning to read the books that may or may not have been written by a nutter and his fellow nuttees.
Think about Medusa. Maybe there was some chick who hated brushing her hair so it turned into dreadlocks. Then she refused to have sex with some a**hole, became totally persecuted beyond belief due to his powerful position, called a slut, people said her hair looked like snakes, and there you have it, history turned into myth. So would you go to war over what colour her hair was? Or whether she was born in a tree or a cave... It doesn't involve beliefs though so its neither a crispy nor delectable expample. But the drift is there and I get it.
*not an anarchist for all those imaginary government agents out there :-) ¶ 16:09
