| The Art of Serving |
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Speech is a game, with the winner evidently having coined the appropriate phrases irrespective of the object of their description. I know what you're about to say, but don't you agree that what we occasionally refer to as "the game" is really the embodiment of what life is actually all about: the harsh struggle for psychological survival? And that it's not so much the choice between good and evil as the monopoly of humanity, which as a subspecies represents an absolute minority on a universal plane, but the need to win that far and away outstrips the divine admonitions of the Ten Commandments for the simple reason that conscience is a spin-off of modifications powered on by material processes of decay? Seen in the above light, it would be a good idea to use genetic modification in giving the Dutch nation the edge over its neighbouring countries as well as pre-emptively gear all current quiz shows to this new remit, although we'll let Belgium (or in any event Flanders) join on condition that the most recent round of official spelling changes to the Dutch language are rescinded. And so, although anyone who reads the papers knows that the naked cockerel is about to burst onto the scene (how about calling him Jean-Jacques, in the wake of Dolly the Sheep and our own GM star, Herman the Bull?), whether this will be experienced as reprehensible depends entirely on the charisma of the word. But even if this weren't so, if you were to digest a century's worth of written history of everyday morals, you'd be surprised at how the pattern of rejection and denial inexorably transforms into the opposite. I read somewhere - can't remember where just now - that at the time the first motor vehicles appeared on the roads, a chap bearing a red flag was statutorily required to walk ahead. Assuming that a pedestrian with or without a flag were to survive a stroll along today's motorways, he or she would belatedly be arrested. Although I fully appreciate the protests against the naked cockerel, I'd love to know whether the future will safeguard our conscience from repression even if we're dead set against something or other at this particular juncture. Or, to end on a positive note for a change, let me serve up as an advice that lone voices in the wilderness, in addition to receiving compensation for loss of zest of life, should be liberally rewarded on being found to have been absolutely right in the first place. |