The Function of Language

 

As infants humanity searches for language

in the babbling babies invoke as they

emulate what they hear to make sense

of communication until finally they

achieve language skills mimicking what

they hear in the knowledge of being well

understood, an induction into personhood

impressing with their uncanny facility to

form and understand messages. As for the

convention of language exchange as the

fulcrum for fully understanding how others

think, feel and behave in a world that

inherited the chaos of the genesis of language

great minds of communication come to

appreciate that a common universal speech

does not lead to a cessation of human

hostilities for even in speaking the same

language, comprehension evades for the

fact is humanity even in uttering similar

words speaks a language evasive, intentions

hidden from scrutiny and Babel persists.

 

Reductio ad Absurdum

 

What is the meaning of life? Must it

have a meaning? Cannot we exist simply

because we do? Did Nature have a purpose

when she devised a creature that celebrates

itself as an expression of the highest order

of animal life? What other animals of her

creative imagination are themselves creative

capable of deep, dense thought in the sublime

exercise of reason? We are, therefore we think.

Think of this: the three common elements of

the animal kingdom from infancy to agedness 

in the foundational fundamentals of nature's 

injunction to her offspring in pursuit of the 

elements of survival: Our needfully functional 

existential fixation motivating all of nature's 

creatures: food, play, sleep. Unique are we?

 

A Global Pestilence ... Pathogen/Protest

 

 

Oh ye of little faith in world leadership ...

Pause and consider how heartwarming it is

when presidents and prime ministers consult

discovering how much in common they share.

Take the instance of the unabashed admiration

Canada's prime minister has for China's premier 

a democracy looking on in awe at the ease 

in which a dictatorship is able to exert dominion 

over a vast multitude whose numbers dwarf 

those of Canada. Yet generous to a fault Canada's 

own premier advises China's that in the face

of public disaffection and mounting protests it is 

best to allow the public to ventilate its frustrations 

honouring the human right to exercise free speech. 

Canada's own response to group protests of hundreds 

as opposed to China's vast protests of hundreds of 

thousands swiftly settled inconvenient issues by the

timely invocation of what was once identified as the 

War Measures Act. China's admirable restraint in only 

ordering its national police to secure public safety 

honouring the rule of the Chinese Communist Party 

in its diligent concern for public health and social 

cohesion strikingly similar in text and tenor to Canada's 

own. Brought to agreement by a global pestilence.

 

 

Excluded and Forlorn

 

Who's in the popular ascendancy?

Not you, chum, if you're white. Being male

doesn't help. Have you considered a broadly

magnifying scrutiny into your genetic

background? Could be back there

somewhere there's Indigenous ancestry.

That would help your odour switch from

repugnant to fragrant. Not two-spirited?

Maybe give it a try? Ever considered

transitioning to the alternative gender?

How about none at all? So here you are

puzzled and disconcerted because employers

are actively searching out the disabled and

those of visible ethnic origin that excludes 

you. You've got all the professional creds

and worked hard to achieve them. Well

that's sad, my friend. The world just happens

to be counter-spinning and you're just not

prepared. Now, if you were gay or lesbian --

ever consider that? -- you'd qualify. You'd

have suffered gross indignities to your psyche

as a social pariah but now the world's turned.

Welcome to the new reality that worships all

that was once exotic and forbidden, spurned as

a disgrace to human nature. Here's lookin' atcha.

 

 

There Be Dragons

 

The world of astronomy is agog

at the latest revelation of a gigantic

Black Hole ferociously tearing a star

a multiplicity of times larger than our own

to shreds of non-existence. True the

sum of the parts of that star were

summarily consumed while bursts of

radiation so bright they obscured the

light of surrounding stars in the vast

reaches of the universe Earth's most

powerful telescopes discerned, documenting

the end of a star that had wandered too

close to the irresistible gravitational pull of

the ravenous beast waiting, like a trap-door

spider to subsume all in its path. The

imagery as fresh as yesterday. No word

nor will there ever be whether livable

planets orbited that star, whether its

inhabitants were going about their lives 

when instantly the source of their existence

expired and so too, dismally, would they.

 

 

Nouveau Niche

 

You may have been taught at an impressionable

age by your socially aware parents themselves 

experienced in racism and exploitation the 

victims of slander and accusation that 

eventually culminated in mass slaughter that 

authentically justified the label of genocide 

that in this world there are other groups that

suffer the indignity and harms of bigotry

lending their compassionate support to 

those living in the misery of inequality.

You may have inculcated in your own

offspring an awareness of the equality of

all, however 'different' they may appear

to the eye in a world cradling a single

human race inexorably at war with itself.

Their children too may have benefited as

responsible caring humans with the lessons

passed through the generations of care 

for others. Yet nothing will save you and

yours from the very special scorn and

rejection meted out to all thinkers of sound

reason who skirt the pseudo concerns of

the present generation fetishizing a social

current of progressive witch-hunting linked

to the  elevation of the formerly scorned

and the diminishing of the humanity of all

who championed their inalienable rights. 

 

In Malice The Forethought

 

 

To be held in esteem

to be loved and cherished

to have someone with whom

you can feel emotionally free

to divulge all the discomfort

and discomfiting incidents

in one's life is everyone's goal

for we are human and our

generic nature is to seek out

those like ourselves whose

temperaments and values can

reflect our own in the creation

of a fluid and warm cocoon

of togetherness. People differ

and so do their circumstances

and their compass in life and

how they adjust to others in

their lives. How very fortunate

it is when two people harbouring

the fantasy of victimhood and

resentment in their juvenile

emotional state of estrangement

and petulant wish to cause harm

and pain to others discovered one

another to found their celebrity

team of malevolent misery.