Wisdom of the Idiots: Part 12 – Words as a Franchise, The Consensus Trance and Radical Chocolate
The following is a definitely non exhaustive list of words and phrases that make a healthy person check his wallet and reach for his gun. Unhealthy persons will be observed to check their gun and reach for their wallets:
religion; partner; stakeholder; citizen; sustainable; smart; the environment; gay.
“Political Correctness”; now there's a phrase that should have all right minded folk buying razor sharp machetes and signing up for sword fencing classes. I could add more here. So could you.
One problem I have with the consensus trance is that everybody’s doing it and you know what happens when there are too many idiots abroad! Look, Charles Smart says we're in a consensus trance. So does Milton Erickson. Aldous and Julian Huxley say it and so does George Gurdjieff. Madam Blavatski is in there as well as Rudolph Steiner - and Ignatius Loyola had a word or two on it - not to mention Mr. Skinner. Ask absolutely anyone in the Vienna Circle or even in the Athenaeum Club. They'll tell you. We’re already hypnotised.
Damn. I don't like being me now.
I can't eat chocolate any more. Since I became tyrannised by a mysterious health consciousness I am obsessed with the ingredients in my all time favourite foods. It's like futuristic, science fiction chemical warfare out there! I've become reclusive and suspicious and begun to ask around the sleazy parts of town to see if there are any black market farmers dealing in clean food. It's a sordid business, I know, and I do feel an imposed sense of shame, but what’s a chap to do?
Musashi.
In Wisdom of the Idiots: Part 13, we visit Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera, look at Orthonormality in the Vietnamese Pig Industry and examine the Thixotropic Qualities of non Newtonian Materials.