The Stone

These are the failures of man without a purpose - nothing in life worthwhile beyond pleasing themselves. The family broken by misconceptions of the nature of man and wife, a society seeking always for what is bigger than life and luring the young with a million fantasies beyond the power of any parent. The tribe diluted, the nation with power but without ideals, ruled by acquisition which cannot help but grow into greed and anything-goes if you can get away with it. Never enough, never satisfying the soul. But, never learning more than to memorize and salute, never learning to think, the game goes on. Who is this selfish I without religion, without a soul, without a philosophy, with nothing but materialism, forgetting that you can't take it with you and not considering where we are going? Is this nature's inevitable corruption or might it be a more sinister plot?

Who altered our justice system? Who turned us to money as the value of all things? How did we become the bully nation? Do we really believe we know better, or is it just propaganda we swallow along with lunch and a handful of medications, while power goes on about its business? Peace? Whatever for? Why cry for peace, when war makes such a profit? Our land is no longer a country. It's a business. Let us instead concentrate on circus, spectacle, false flag entertainment and diversion to cover the clever hands of the pick-pocket bands.

Who is in the lead? From whence came these ideas? They were not ours before. Ideas demeaning man and woman both and, leading all to become the W***e of Babylon. I will not cry when she and all her mighty misconceptions are thrown down into the pit. But, who will be the man with a purpose? Which man, clear headed and brave-heart, will start? Who will throw the stone? What form will this stone take? And, how strong will it need to be?

[January 12, 2015]

Reviews

[marcus]

Wow, you've summed up the sad state of affairs in America and the western world nicely!!
The Roman empire, lives and falls again! Maybe if more people learned history we wouldn't be doomed to keep repeating it.
I feel this is a poem, not a short story!

[Vishuddha]

You are right. I have never been able to write a story. Is philosophy perhaps a mixture of the two?

[marcus]

could be, I call it philosophical poetry.

[David Lewis Paget]

Who indeed. You have encapsulated the whole new world here, not just America. As you say, where did it all go wrong? Is it an effect of over-population and the flood of refugees across borders, the mixing of cultures that are an anathema to each other, the secularising of our once Christian ideals? Or is it just plain greed, corporate greed, individual greed, and the ever widening gulf between the haves and the have nots. Probably all of these things, but the road back has already been obscured by weeds, deeds and misdeeds of the ruling classes. And religious fundamentalism is just complicating the process.

[Vishuddha]

There is no road back, I think. Only forward. Except that we move in circles.
We have been here before. I have recently again watched Fellini's Roma. I have read of the fall of Rome. I understand the nature of corruption and how, once started, like rust, it does not stop. All the same mistakes. We are all living under the same curse, "May you be reborn in interesting times."