Poem by Martin Anton Smith martinantonsmith@gmail.com
Poets should be openly willing to explain their overly esoteric poetry.
Overly Esoteric poetry without an explanation is I believe, simply an act of anal retention, or of admission of guilt to the very serious charge of ‘literary onanism’.
Overly Esoteric Poetry is the willing literary creation of a ‘false god’ – The god of ‘stolen mystique’.
The Teleology or Grand Aim of the OEP’ers is to garner ‘false praise’ and ‘unwarranted adulation’.
Some say OEP is a mental illness, but I beg to differ – I believe it to be a ‘serious character flaw’ only.
Many kind people have indeed become victims of the OEP’ers & this must be combatted ‘head on’.
Upon reading Overly Esoteric Poetry & its non-existent explanations, the reader should do one or all of the following:
Rip out & ‘bonfire’ the page immediately (with matches or a lighter), making sure any un-esoteric poems are retained (For best dramatic effect do this to your offending unbought book-store book while in front of a captive audience).
You can stamp on the Guilty Poet’s feet – Stamp twice if they added this comment: “but what does it mean to you – that’s what really counts”
You can write in the margins of the offending passage: “This is far too esoteric, to not have any explanation” (be sure to leave an unhappy face emoji)
You can either write-to or say-to the Poet an equally esoteric verse, explaining or in reality non-explaining, why you did one or all of the above treatments. e.g.
“Dear Un – Sir
Your perfidy-ness was dialectically imprecise. On top of this your topiary inelegance was sparce of any gnosis or incandescence. I can only hope that a kaleidoscopic entree of inexactitude will befall your double entendre of an ontologically reverse pathology, resulting in ‘babyloniously’ duplicitous & mixological results. As such I have had to punish you & don’t come crying to me now that it has rightly happened.”
I re-iterate, ‘Overly Esoteric Poetry’ -OEP must be regaled against in all its forms!
Poetry must be an egalitarian pursuit, where the idea is King – for ideas like all fair-minded Kings must exist in plain sight, for a King who is good to his subjects will not fear scrutiny.
The King should be clearly identifiable – be he fully naked, half clothed or pompously garbed.
There need not be any need to guess what the ‘King” is wearing in flip coinfashion, desperately hoping your audience neighbour agrees with your blind guess – that the King’s is ‘naked’ or ‘dressed’ or half-half.
Judicial Sentences for Poets who are creating careers from ‘false god sentences’, must be harsh & nearly immutable.
We must create a new penal colony island. As no untaken islands currently exist – It can be made in a fashion similar to how the Chinese create islands in the South China Seas, by hoovering up sand & redepositing it until it finally rises as a whale emerges from the ocean to draw breath.
Once The OEP Penal Island is constructed, we can build an adulation hermetically sealed dome, where each OEP can face only those of his OEP brethren – and here they will face the reality that they can no longer fool anyone at all – for a crook knows a crook.
Each OEP will swiftly go mad, as they will be deprived of their life-blood – faux adulation.
This is fair – for what they do is a crime against humanity – and this, oh listener is large understatement.
Once they achieve madness – they can be released, for a madman’s deception is obvious and see-able to the sane.
We can then simply re-christen them each as ‘A 21st Century MAN’.
i.e. Somewhat Mad But Does Not Know It.
Thus, proving the adage “a hardened criminal cannot truly be rehabilitated.”
Woe is the Overly Esoteric Poet, So Hated We Even Made Him Into A Typical 21st Century Man.
One Day We Onlooking & Interfering Overlords Of Justice Will Face Our Own Jailors.
And we surely will face the gallows, for the punishment we dished out, did not befit the crime.
We should have simply stopped at ‘shot over the bow tactics’ of the stamping on their feet or the esoterically veracious retort previously quoted.
We went too far with the Penal Island & the hermetically sealed, adulation-free dome.
We Poets & Poetry Critics – most of which are just ‘tryhards‘ – must know where the line is, and always remember:
A ’21st Century Man’ is infinitely worse than an ‘Overly Esoteric Poet’ will ever be.
So perhaps we should just let them OEP’s be.
And I say this not for a deep inbuilt need for social justice,
But for the very real concern – which of course, may really just be garden variety paranoia,
That I might actually be one of them.
But luckily this lack of confidence soon passes,
As I tell myself the very true fact, that I almost always offer explanations for any bouts of OEP.
Where I have failed in this honorable task, I am always willing to divulge my philosophy to anyone suffering my foolishness.
I vow to never just say to a confused reader or listener “But what does it mean to you – that’s all that really counts”.
To not do so would make me a flake & a hypocrite, which I would hate to be, and there certainly is no need to swell the ranks of the OEP.
Postscript: I Being born in 1978, regard myself essentially as a Late 20th Century Man, as I ‘came of age’ around the years surrounding the Millennium’s turn. I will continue to be fond for this 90’s era, as the 1990’s were a rare golden era in the West – an era we did not recognize as a good one until this dastardly 21st Century bed itself in, so allowing recent History to finally crystalize & be seen for what it was. There is of course one way the first quarter of the 21st Century could be one day also be seen as “a good one” – due to historical relativity – but what this implies is a terrible thought indeed, and I suppose involves a gigantic war, that perhaps we are already in. Now excuse me I must get some rest for my poor frazzled now ‘early middle aged’ brain, & I don’t want to end up like Nietzsche – railroaded by acute burn out in his mid forties.
Welcome to The Baby Wants Its Bottle Philosophy & Poetry Inc. Podcast, a creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. In this episode I read 3 New Poems: Zen & the Art of Not Making Nukes/Claptrap The Monkey/Modern Woman. When writing the intro for this podcast, I cannot but feel about the world in the same way as LENIN did when he said “Decades can pass without anything much happening, then suddenly many decades can pass in days”. For does not this quote sum up the situation the world finds itself in today?
The 2022 Ukraine-Russian war has been brewing for, you could certainly argue, since the fall of the Berlin wall 1990. Shortly after this huge event the US-led Nato Alliance begun an ever expansion towards Russia’s border. Of course, I should add the obvious fact that Putin did not like this fact, and had spent decades warning of his displeasure, as evidenced best by his 2007 speech. Of course, the Eu/Nato/US story is it happened overnight as isolated insanity in the mind of “USSR Empire Regaining” Putin. As with two playground adversary children who are called to the principal’s office for their over exuberance – the truth will naturally lie somewhere between these partisan and propagandised extremes. But sadly, no one bar a few commentators seems to be admitting this sober fact, and I fear this view will be soon silence completely as guilty of the crime of “being an apologist”. In War time it seems you aren’t allowed to be rational.
Fast forward to 2004 14 years after the Nato expansion and we saw a messy political coup whereby in a nutshell we saw a political rupture where Ukraine split from a view to Russia towards that of US Nato @ the Eu. However at least one area never accepted this or the elections that resulted in a political break away from Russia. This was the Donbass area. Thus in 2014 a border skirmish broke out as two breakaway regions announce independent statehood vs wider Ukraine. And I haven’t mentioned the Russian annexation of Crimea that same year – which went Putin’s and the Separatists way but raised the West ire in terms of economic warfare/sanction on Russia.
Now in the most recent event we see a full-blown invasion by Russia on the entire Ukraine. Of course, in the fog of war and war’s partisan propaganda, it is not necessarily obvious who is “the bad guy” and “who is the good guy”. Putin says he is a liberator of a rogue state and a defender of Donbass and Russia from Nato encroachment, while Nato/Eu/The West says essentially Putin is a new ‘Hitler’, but isn’t willing to directly enter the fray with troops for fear of sparking WW3.
We have Volodimir Zelenskyy the Ukraine president being painted as a Churchillian figure in the West. We have The West attacking Russia with economic warfare, which surely seem to be a risk factor for major blowback, even if only economic. It seems strange that the West is very cautious regroup troops, but happy to pull the trigger on sanctions and even target Russian citizens assets on foreign land. Could this not fan the flames of a new WW3? I will briefly say this: Are we the “Western nations” acting wisely with strategy to stop the War, to stop disaster and so much death and displacement of refugees? I am not sure we are acting wisely at all.
I am also concerned about private foreign citizens signing up for the war – but I guess this has always happened – famously Orwell himself did this is the Spanish Civil War. In a depressing thought, perhaps all those decades of relative peace were simply a mirage. Did we become complacent about War so much that we became loose with our morals and lost our stoicism? Or is this still with us simply hidden under layers of metaphorical clothing? I fear we have become deluded to think that our technology, scientists, false ‘economic wizards at the central bank’s’ and progress itself has improved our world and made it “self-repairing” of its many ailments.
Perhaps we have forgotten the cyclical nature of society, and we have now landed back to the looming crisis of the 1930’s. I fear whatever is happening may be an unstoppable force, and we are strapped heartily to the “Wings of Destiny”. The only certainty now is a mathematical truism. This War, and now mass sanctions and refugees have added many new variables to our world and thus a different “world line” of results.
We may look back at 2022 as the “end of an Epoch, and the Start of another. But no one, not the brightest of the bright can knows what the world will look like in 2032. Perhaps by 2032 we will look at the “TERMINATOR” 1984 movie as prophesy, and a kindly counter revolutionary called KYLE will save us from “the Rise of the Machines” – but if that is true, will the survivors know they were saved? Or would their memories of this be under lock and key in another timeline in another parallel universe?
One feels that an era similar to the “Quantum Revolution” of the first half of the 20th century is nearly upon us. It needn’t be the much hegemonic movie script dystopia prophesy of ‘artificial intelligence’. it will probably be totally unexpected as was the World Wide Web was as a socio-technical event. Perhaps we may need to live under Europa’s sea, or on Mars sooner than we think. You can’t leave anything off the table and what is on the table may be stacked astoundingly high.
The first poem “Zen & the Art Of Not Making Nukes’ has elusions to destiny, Predestination, forgivenessand will power. We all have a choice at the individual group and nation level to forgive without necessarily forgetting. Is war not simply an inability to forgive coupled with a dream of retribution? Is not war simply the emotional immaturity of a Politician and their generals who think victory will make them and their people more valuable and respected?
The second poem is a blunt assessment that we “the human race” are still “as Chimps”, with all these fangled ways (Suits, Smartphones, Elections etc) to deny it. It’s just a few words to say that we need to be more humble and less egotistical and materialistic. Though I am guilty of insulting Chimps, I would also like to talk out both sides of my mouth and say this: We should be learning from Monkeys and other animals and live simply more have more basic and sustainable lives. We really are a troubled bunch, and I would not be surprised if the Earth culled us back.
The third Poem is about those few Women that are simply the glue that hold our communities together. These are the Women who are really like an alien race in themselves, and rise above the more standard and ridiculous Men and Women. Yes, aliens do actually exist, and I’ve met a couple of them popping in and out of the fabric of the cosmos. But alas, I’ve never been smart enough to become good friends with one. Perhaps all the War needs is the love of these good ‘alien’ woman, who will stop all the silliness immediately? Stranger things have happened! Perhaps an Alien Female Legion from Trappist star system? Or have I gone too far? After all Alpha Centuri is closer at only 4.1 Light years.
The Fourth Poem I wrote yesterday, and Is an account of “Modern War” and its deep entanglement with money. It points to the insanity whereby many get rich via war. In the poem I posit that in the 21st the soldier themselves have become infected by “Portfolio Culture” and prefers the war continue, so that his “War Stocks Don’t Tank”. The Ultimate question is do we fight wars to make money, or do we make money to fight wars? The wise know that money and a decision to go to War is front in the minds of the topper-most politicians – who never have to fight in the trenches or send in their sons and daughters.
And so let’s begin.
ZEN AND THE ART OF NOT MAKING NUKES
She Did What She Did,
Because She Was Who She Was.
If She Had Done Something Different,
She Would Not Have Been Herself.
She Would Have Been Someone Else.
And The Same Goes For Me.
This Logic Is Robust!
And Armed With This Philosophical Toolkit,
You Can Forgive Histories Worst Tyrant,
Your Parents,
Your Siblings,
Old Schoolmates,
Your Boss & Workmates,
Your Ex,
And Maybe, Just Maybe –
Yourself!
And Anyway,
Learning How To Make Small Tactical Nuclear Weapons,
In Your Parent’s Basement,
Is far Too Costly,
Intellectually Difficult,
Time Consuming,
Personal Injury Causing,
Requires Too Many International Import Licences,
And Is Impossible To Do Without Arousing Suspicion
From The Neighbours,
Who Will Undoubtedly Soon Rat You Out To The Cops.
Your Mother Of Course,
Will Be None-The-Wiser.
So Don’t Go Down That Track.
Don’t Be This Headline:
“Bitter & Twisted Middle Age Loser Arrested After Trying To Build Atomic Bomb In Their Mum’s Basement – Neighbour Tipped Off Police After A Series Of Loud Bangs & Flashes”
Just Accept:
“It Is What It Is” –
Glib But Perfectly Wise & Certainly True.
And Anyway,
Nuclear Armageddon Will Well Take Care Of Itself,
And In it’s Own Way,
Without Your Amateurish Involvement.
Claptrap The Monkey
The World Is Simply A Pantomime
A Show – A Drama – A Joke.
A Cast Full Of Chimps.
Chimps In Suits & Dresses.
Chimps With Money.
Chimps With No Money.
Nerd Chimps And Jock Chimps.
The Only Problem Is This:
The Chimps Don’t Know They Are Chimps.
Or That They Live in A World Of Make Believe.
They Certainly Don’t Know
That They Are Bad Actors.
This Fact Is The Missing First Page
Of All the History Books That Have Ever Been Written.
But Who Tore Them Out?
In other words,
A billion monkeys
all working at a billion typewriters,
Will eventually type the word
Honorific-abilitudin-itatibus.
END OF POEM
(NOTE : Honorific-abilitudin-itatibus eaning is “The state of someone that can achieve honors “. It is the longest word in Shakespeare‘s works; longest word in the English language featuring alternating consonants and vowels[11])
“Modern Woman”
She wears a cape,
She climbs walls,
Much to my chagrin.
She leaps in shadows,
She twists and shouts,
Watch out enemies.
Where wild men fight,
She whips up a storm,
Now they drink moonshine.
She’s forward in time,
She’s Backward in space
She’s colors in the sky.
She tries to trick,
She’s glad to gloat,
She lights the cosmic pipes.
She can hold
A beam of light
And see around the bend.
She said to the sun,
Can closer I come?
But will you melt my mind?
“SoldierSharesin WW3″
At Forty-Three, I Got The Nod,
From Couch Blob to World War Three.
Now I’m Half Starving And almost Dead!
But I Haven’t Even Left Yet!
Now There’s a Constant Ringing In My Head.
Coz That Bullet Came From ‘Direction Z’.
But Don’t Despair, My Fellow Bean,
If The War Continues ’til After Tea,
My Share’s Go up 2000 per cent!
Lo and Behold! I’ll Upgrade From The Trench,
To A Raincoat – And Then,
To a Glamorous, High Ceiling Tent!
But If The Enemy Surrenders,
This Great War Will End,
And My Share’s Will Tank!
I’ll Be Skint, Flat Broke – Outa Bread!
But Never-mind Dear Chap,
I Messaged The Other Side,
And Asked Them Politely,
To Keep Up the Fighting.
So Not To Sell Us Short!
For In The Madness of 21st Century War,
Having No Money or Stocks,
Is Universally Agreed Upon As
a Fate Far Worse Than Death.
P.s. The Glorious Soldier Outlasted The War,
And Basks In the Sun Outside His Mansion,
In the Cayman Islands.
And Now Writes His Glorius Memoirs,
Of Trading Stocks,
Amid Whizzing Bullets,
Going Past His Ears,
In the Trenches,
On A “Smartphone”
At “The Front”.
Thank you for listening to the Baby Wants Its Bottle Philosophy & Poetry Podcast, A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. This podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Welcome to The Baby Wants It’s Bottle Poetry Inc. Podcast, a creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. In this episodeI read two of my latest poems “Somewheres Nowhere” & “Sugar low Cat”. I wrote these two poems very quickly and off the cuff in about 30 mins a piece. This is mostly how I write for short poems. I guess the ideas come from my unconscious mind which resides somewhere I can’t yet begin to describe. While writing these poems, I was at home, and in a contemplative mood. This mood was a little different from usual, as my brain had been juiced. Juiced no not on drugs you fool! My Brain was juiced from following the incredibly interesting events coming out of the middle east – namely the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. I don’t want to talk about this here, as the poems I have written are not about that story at all. I would also rather be partially uplifting in tone for this awesome episode. I will say just one thing. On the themes Afghanistan now forces us to acknowledge, I can only pray that good people somehow some day are rewarded and that those creating pain have their powers diminished by a higher loving forces.
Now let me talk about the poems. For “Somewheres Nowhere”, I started writing this with not any ideas and all – I had a blank page and I just wrote the first line. The rest flowed. When I wrote that first line (Which was originally ‘ On The Road to Nowhere’) I couldn’t help but think of the great Talking Heads song from long ago in the 80’s. I guess my poem has some similarities to that song – it’s really about meaning in life, and the poem is about someone leaving what they see as an unrewarding joint for brighter lights and greener pastures. Of course the change the character seeks could represent a change of psychological state rather than just their physical location.
This protagonist also talks of someone else or maybe just their alter ego. This is that who is staying behind with what they know best, imperfect as it may seem. I think this is a slice of reality, when you leave somewhere you are also going somewhere else, but there is always going to be a ghost of that place residing deep inside. Try as you might, you cannot forget the past entirely. I think everyone eventually learns this fact. You must one day reconcile the past as the alternative – that is to bury your past – is a growing hornets nest of psychological pain.
I guess the ‘somewhere’ in this poem is not just anywhere, but is a place that has defined the protagonist in some way, at some stage of their life – maybe a hometown for example. Their is a conflict between the ego that is staying and the ego that is going. The ego leaving arrogantly assumes they are growing wings and that the ego that is staying will be far worse off. Of course this poem is deciding one sided – and the ego staying is left hung out to dry by the adventurous jet setter off to conquer the world.In this poem their voice of those left behind is not yet heard.As I write that last line, I thought of the Afghani citizens and trapped foreigners desperate situation and I wonder if this was the unconscious motivation for this poem. We must ask ourselves why it is that the most vulnerable people on this planet never have a voice, while the privileged voices have an entrenched system of amplification.
This poem also reminds me by the age old story of the young adult leaving home as per the post industrial western age “right of passage”. I guess it could also be described as “modern day exodus”. This (in the secular orientated industrial west) is always assumed to be a good thing (to flee rather than stay) however our current times (financial decay/pandemics/civil unrest) now seem to be actively pouring water on this right of passage or Big OE.
Of course this poem is written to be generalized, and thus can refer to anyone leaving something/someone they know or what they see as a ‘new start’. I think these days we are having circumstances force us to rebalance our expectations in regards to materialism and carefree attitudes. These are the myths that have been pushed so heavily in the Western world since the 1960’s.
The other poem – Sugar Low Cat” is a more intentionally positive poem and written as a bit of a laugh. It’s really just a diary of what my cat was doing around the yard yesterday. He’s an expert bird hunter, and our house has many plants and trees which give him great cover to engage in guerrilla warfare tactics vs those little flying dinosaurs. For the record the cat is called Squeeky, he is 3 years old and of the Tortoiseshell variety. I do not have children, and as I age I guess I treat my pet as a pseudo child (how sad). Cats are far easier to deal with than spouses and real children, though I know that having a cat instead of a child will only make the western civilization fall that much harder and sooner.
In closing I will also say that the use of the term “Sugar Low” is inspired by my mother who used over use this term in my childhood – “I was Sugar Low” she would often say to explain something away (It is very amusing looking back on it as an adult). I should also mention if you go to the transcript link in the description, you can see my cartoon sketch I drew specifically for this poem. Well that’s enough of the intro’s lets get into the reading the two poems I’ll start with “Somewhere’s Nowhere” and end with “Sugar low Cat”.
“Somewhere’s Nowhere” Poem by Martin Anton Smith Aug 2021
Nowheresville
On The Road to Nowhere
Where Nothing Ever happens
And Nothing Ever Will
You Try To Leave
You Try To Hide
But You Belong Nowhere
And That’s Where You’ll Reside
And When You Die
You Wont Be Free
You’re Stuck In Nowhere
And That’s Where You’ll Be
Don’t Wait On Me
For I Cannot Come
Somewhere’s Calling
So Fiddle Dee Dee
Don’t Get Me Wrong
For Of You I’m Fond
It’s Just Nowhere’s Somewhere
Where I Cant Belong
So Brace Yourself
And Hunker Down
Nowhere’s Not Fun
And You’re times Not Done
I’ll Let You Know
When Your Times Near
When Nowhere Transforms
To Something You Can Bare
Adios Farewell
Sayonara My Friend
My Heart Is With You
Till Your Bitter End.
End of Poem
“Sugar low Cat” Poem by Martin Anton Smith Aug 2021
Because my cat was sugar low,
he leaped for birds flying low.
He remains sugar low,
& the birds are flying high.
Now he comes to me,
because he is still hun-gry.
Yes, I’m his fallback solution,
so he’s fed without commotion.
The birds did chirp and sigh,
& radioed a fly-by.
Thankyou for listening to the Baby wants It’s Bottle Podcast, A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. This podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
Original Feature Image by Martin Anton Smith 2016 Zeppelin over London’s Big Ben
Welcome to The Baby Wants Its Bottle Poetry Podcast – A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a New Zealand Based creative. In This Special Edition Podcast, I bring a poem with deep analysis. The Poem from late2019/Early 2020, before “Covi.d Times” had truly hit. The analysis is current from me, right now. At the time of writing the poem, I had been musing about how unique the Western cornerstones of our beliefs are. I was particularly annoyed ay some of the worst ones, and although there are good ones as well (such as a legal system with a right to defense, good sanitation, compulsory schooling to age 16 and mostly free/decent health care, to name but a few).
The basis for this Poem was from a draft file I found, and had put aside (it was hiding in cyberspace), and I found again on April 18th 2021. I polished it, a little bit, but it is essentially “written on the spot”, from the original form. You might call it a “Rough Diamond”, and it is half poem half philosophy, which is a format I find excellent for discussion potential. So in this podcast the discussion is the feature, rather than the poem itself. As this seriousness, will not be to everyone’s taste, I have marked it as a “special Edition Podcast” When I wrote this, I admit, I must have been in a black mood, as I chose to concentrate on the worst features of the West in the 21st century, without mentioning the good parts..
This is why I like to add discussion to my poems, it allows me to reappraise the poem, discuss, and add new and balanced material, that is not strictly part of the Poem itself. Poets and philosophers are a strange lot, I am sure we kind revel in the “miserable”. This is why when someone accuses me of being “downbeat”, I kind of feel somewhat aggrieved and surprised. As a poet/philosopher I feel its good to raise uncomfortable points, even if they are in theory “negative”. But to that I say this: is it negative to shout to a person crossing the road in the direct path an oncoming bus, so they can jump out if the way and so save themselves from death or injury? In saying that, its always wise to also offer positivity in terms of resolving bad problems – you could call this the “Floor Managers Dictum”.
I think we need to be honest with the negative in society, but then we also need to also recognize the “Devil You Know” dictum (This is the conservative dictum of what you have will usually be better than some untried new thing). Failing to recognize the “Devil You Know Dictum” means you can fall into the progressive trap – whereby after an appraisal of an aspect of the “failing status quo system” a new replacement system is thought up, and if tried out to its full extent, usually fails terribly to live up to theoretical expectations, and a disaster is experienced. After the dust settles (and this can often take many decades via the slow process of creating written accounts in History books, of what actually occurred ) of the Progressive/radical change, it is plainly seen for what it is it is then realized the “Prior bad system”, or “status quo” in place, wasn’t nearly as bad as the progressives had thought. There’s reasons for everything. The abrupt change from Post ww2 social and economic policy to neoliberal policy could is an example of fail to heed to “devil you know” dictum. We live in that myopic reality from the pasts leadership, half of us were born into it, not recognizing how truly bad much of its results are, but its fair to say the under 40’s are now waking up, as they age. Unfortunately the under 30’s seem to favour heavy socialism and communism, we see this in the “woke movement” – it doesn’t end well.
Of course my Poem/Thought Trail from last year, no doubt will suffer from the problem of “its easier to find problems that find solutions” dictum – I expect much of the seemingly “bad things of the west” I point out, are better than some progressive alternative replacement. However, analyzing whether something is “status Quo” or “Progressive Change” is complex – as it depends on the time scales evaluated. what is it place now is “status quo” on a 40 year time line, yet was a radical departure from the 40 years before that, the Post ww2 era which seemed to be an equal part mix of socialism/capitalism. What is “status quo” now is actually a now deeply embedded, radical doctrine compared to 1945-80 economic/politico/social policy. Is it really a “conservative policy” to stay with a radical era of policy – that of the current neoliberal era? Or is it more accurate to say that favoring the current Neoliberal era is a position to “continue to be radical” vs the earlier more balanced post ww2 era?
Original Art by Martin Anton Smith (detail) – our economy and society often needs a time machine to remind us of the past.
I think a policy man of 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s would baulk at someone describing the current state of the politico/economic system as “conservative”, and thus something “not to be fiddled with”. The post ww2 era Politician or Business Leader, would say its a radical doctrine that shouldn’t have ever started, and if it had been started, indeed continued for decades, it should then always be cancelled and rolled back. I argue, and have for some time, that much of Wests Post 1980 economic/politico changes* have been problematic, as the ills of those “progressive”/radical changes from the 80s forward, seems to have been willingly camouflaged by our World, National and Community Leaders.
*In a Nutshell the Neoliberal era 1980 to present is the era of ideological cry of “market forces/free trade”, which of course was pro structural unemployment, pro inequality and pro anti-competitiveness, given the rise and rise of the powerful corporations during this era, and the “Financializing” of the economy. It is that which continues to this day, the creator of such dysfunction of mass homelessness and the widening housing crisis, the working poor, a intractable ruling technocracy. Perhaps the most obvious shocking feature of the modern era is to choose not to punish the unthinking speculator, but to aid and abet in his embodiment – this is most obviously seen in the practice of speculators flipping existing housing stock back and forth to each other, gaining capital, while the renters – common workers and families face poor conditions much as rampart mold, sudden evictions, large rises in rent. These rises in rent are now making it questionable whether their is an incentive to work, as the percentage of wages spent on rent has ballooned so high. So such a situation is a threat to production in the real economy – the engine-house of our society, our social fabric. Under the current system, rather than trying to cure this by building more housing stock, the reverse is done, the red tape is utilized, and their is only gated access to new land – for those in familial positions of privilege. They say to find out who controls something, look to see who benefits – this in the west has been the much older speculators and rent barons, with a pandering, in on it, red tape creating political class. Yes this sounds a bit Trotsky like – but its true – we have workers and families sleeping in cars, tents, living in dilapidated unhealthy housing, with no discretionary funds to build the real economy of value creation.
in 2021 we look to the hotspots of USA – California, Portland , New York to see that this camouflaged elitist system is finally failing to uphold its smoke and mirror tactics – its not working, and everyone knows it. We should return to the good policy of the post ww2 era, and not use the bad policy (i.e rigid gender roles, heavy unionization, too casual work safety rules).
Thus the questions my poem raises is a great way to discuss failures and victories of current western culture vs older western culture vs entirely other cultures. The West we are told (by those in ivory towers at least) is largely a product of the Enlightenment, a period starting around the early middle ages, where we moved from superstitious thought and religious law, to one of scientific and technical rationality, with Church as State separated. Its also worth mentioning that the west in the last 60 years, has not only had Church and State separated (and I believe that’s a good idea), but religious affiliation and practice has dwindled. The dwindling of the Church as a mode of social cohesion, I strongly believe, has created a cavernous void – a void that has been attempted to be filled by careerism and material goods and dinner party-ism, but this has failed as a suitable replacement.
I personally believe the social ills of the West can be largely solved by a system whereby people outside a religious belief system, at least believe in an Einsteinian God. Belief in a cosmic creator of some sort seems to allow people to follow the Christian “Golden Rule” (Do Unto Others As They Would Have Do Unto You). Without the “Golden Rule”, Society fails, and results in a society which becomes to parasitic, and ultimately if there are too many parasites, the host dies. I believe this is what we have been seeing in the west – a growth in parasitic behavior, this is most evidenced in economic behavior. The economy has become warped. What they call “the real economy” (Creating value and so Jobs and so wider prosperity) has been shrinking, and the world of Big Finance has skyrocketed (Making Money of existing assets, but adding no real value to the economy). thus wealth has been transferred upwards and inequality has become unsustainable for a stable society, as I eluded to and described earlier discussing Neoliberalism.
You only need to look at the USA and its problems to see the effects of 40+ years bad Western policy. On a positive note – I do believe we see in many people a desire for a return to a society which practices the “Golden Rule, and perhaps a bit of destruction will allow the people displaying parasitic behavior to amend there ways. After all History is full of cycles of all kinds, both periods of greed and generosity. So in reading this poem, I hope the audience sees the wider context, and engages in talk about how to return to a more “Real Economy”, and less Parasitic one. At least Western Society seems to be past the denial phase it was in until roughly 2010 (when the world economy shuddered with the GFC, which was caused by the sub prime mortgage crisis which was, of course rooted in the toxic “Parasitic economy” mentality).
This Poem is really about those negative behaviors that seem to have accelerated from the 60s 70s and 80s but flourished particularly so, in the post GFC western world. A World of “property ladders”, where building a new house, or buying an existing one has become a gated community, and is increasingly aristocratic and familial. So take this intentionally one sided essay, as a discussion point on how we can improve society, but also recognize the “Devil You Know” factor – for we should always avoid throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as our leaders did in the 1980s and continue to do today. The “Real Economy” and real people continue to get the raw deal. For those of you with large reserves of mental energy and patience who are still with me, that’s more than enough of an introduction, so without further ado, let me begin the poem, and remember the one sidedness is to illustrate a point, I remind you we can change to a better world, much quicker than you might realize, given the fighting abilities of the human spirit.
“The Most important Unwritten History of the West Or Dictums to Live By”. Poem by Martin Anton Smith 2020.
The West is Masses of people interacting superficially, and this results in the giving very of little, (especially when you have something) and also so receiving very little (when you have nothing and need a lot).
Masses of people feeling really really annoyed about not being received properly (they wanted a lot for the little they gave).
Masses of People who lionise the ‘down and out’ as of weak character – but only have self pity for themselves when they become an ‘unfortunate’.
Masses and Masses of people not realizing they are totally un-empathetic mean, Calvinistic, walking contradictions (because they have no basic understanding of karma).
A tiny few people who give a lot when they have little (and in return they get a lot when they have little).
Western people have no collective loyalty to their wider society.
Western people are frightened of living life as to that which their passions dictate.
Western people prefer to live vicariously through other untouchable, plastic, unworldly richer total strangers, will even feel they know them, may even ‘love’ them…but hate to see their friends and neighbours succeed.
Western people are so repressed they must get drunk to meet a (sexual) partner.
Western People can’t make enough babies to sustain their economy (and must so import more collective and sexual cultures).
Western People go to a funeral for their best friend or family member, it lasts an hour, is usually managed by a weird stranger (a priest) and then they go back to work as if nothing happened.
Western People get married to someone they don’t love, and is unsuitable, and then have kids with them (because they are deeply worried what strangers will think if they stay single beyond 35-40).
Western People act like children when the marriage dissolves dramatically (though this time instead of throwing toys from a cot, they throw lawyers their (or their ex partners money) hard earned money and bits of paper with threats on them).
Western People pretend that the world is not dangerous, that people’s skin is not as soft as a watermelon, and then act really surprised when someone is injured, or dies early or is in a bad accident. (Sometimes groups of people design a system of shitty easily crushed tin cans with soft people inside them, set them going up to 100- 200km/hr., put them on a collision course, paint a little line a foot between them, and then set them in a giant game of chicken, whereby they pretend this is not a game of chicken, and then chide them or punish them or fine them when inevitably something goes wrong in this game of chicken).
Western People love it when one or two people own all the newspapers and media or all the electricity or all diamonds steel or food, (but yet they hate dictators and denounce them as evil).
Western People keep voting for the same dickheads who encourage all the above, and then act surprised that their lives never improve within the system (even though they voted for the same dickheads who help create and sustain said shitty system).
Western People sell their land to the highest bidder, which means a foreigner, and then talk of how bad, and feign surprise when they see all these foreigners around the place.
Western People have University’s where people are labelled as ‘the smartest guys we have’ in areas of business, the arts, medicine and science…(yet 80% of their income comes from poor and naïve 18 -25 year old’s mortgaging their futures all for these ‘smart people’ their comfortable seat in the ivory tower. These “smartest people” can’t somehow earn their own money via legitimate trade – they must live of loan-sharked overgrown teens).
Western People put the poor in jail and/ or convict them so also ruining their employment chance, for acts that are often tiny misdemeanors based on desperation (But are happy to give taxpayer funding through grants to business owners who create fake jobs schemes in order to steal millions).
Western People are now in decline so much it is at a total all encompassing DNA level (Western people are unaware that they are in Decline, and also how much they are in decline).
Western People who marry into other cultures, and have kids with these, are actually being the smartest western people (But they are often maligned as ‘Sleazy’ for doing so, for ‘how dare they marry those people from those irrational undeveloped countries?’)
Western People start to feel so terrible and depressed, after about age 15 because of the accumulated psychological stress from years of the delusion of denying they are living in a madhouse (then a Doctor who is a legal pathological drug dealer, gives them a pill to make them more manic so to cover the depression, and tells them to go back to the madhouse and come see them for more (a higher dosage) later when this doesn’t work very well.
For Western People, The proof of your true sanity is to realize you live in the long derived Western Madhouse (But if you tell people you realize this fact, you will be thrown in an asylum ,or a halfway house these days as asylums are no longer PC. In an insane world, you are only deemed practically sane if you prove your actual insanity sufficiently well).
All the above has lead me to design a new Western motto to live (or not live by) by it is this:
Cognito Nix Ergo Sum, insaniam convertunt
( The new western motto is ‘I don’t think, therefore I am insane).
End of Poem.
As a final part of post poem discussion, I would like to add a point of hope, to further combat the poems artistic one sidedness – the terrible pandemic crisis we are now more than a year into, may be the catalyst for a better operating western world, socially and economically. After the destruction of ww2, the world had a 30-40 year period of cohesiveness, and perhaps we will see a version of history repeat with the pandemic. Often a crash in life, ultimately brings out the best in all of us as all prior delusions are vanquished and we can see clearly once more. While I often suffer from cynicism, even I know that we can choose a better path, if we simply read history well and remember our historically well served meaningful dictums.
Thankyou for listening to the Baby wants It’s Bottle Podcast, A creative project by Martin Anton Smith, a NZ based creative. This podcast is available on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts from.
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