Localized Savagery
[from Adolf Koch’s Körperbildung, Nacktkultur (Body Education, Nude Culture), published in Leipzig, 1924].
Dickens’ Hard Times begins, “‘NOW, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’”
The speaker, Thomas Gradgrind, has square forefingers and his forehead is a “square wall.” His voice is “inflexible, dry, and dictatorial.” His coat, legs and shoulders are also square. We don’t just know this type but are subjected to them nonstop.
Communists and Fascists loved square, dictatorial buildings, but the one you’re living in is probably just as square. Your boss is a square, but so are you. You have internalized every rule shoved down your little square throat.
Thomas Gradgrind always carries with him a ruler, a pair of scales and a multiplication table, so he’s ready to “measure any parcel of human nature.” That’s science’s vanity. In this reckoning, mental distresses aren’t caused by obvious social factors, inevitable in a Thomas Gradgrind world. They’re merely chemical imbalances to be fixed by Big Pharma. All diseases, too, can be healed or at least checked by Gradgrind Pharmaceuticals.
Yale Medicine on 9/2/24, “COVID Vaccines Reduce Long COVID Risk, New Study Shows.” Only savages doubt scientific studies. “The good news is, the risk of developing Long COVID has dropped significantly since the start of the pandemic—and, according to a new study, we have COVID-19 vaccines to thank for much of this decline.”
Here’s a conspiracy theory. There’s an Elon Musk tunnel connecting Langley, Virginia to New Haven, Connecticut. 340 miles ain’t shit. Didn’t Musk promise a 420 mile tube from LA to San Francisco? The naked homeless of each city will shuttle back and forth for changes of sceneries. It’s good for your nonexistent soul. After taking a dump in the Tenderloin, you can finish wiping your ass at Skid Row. Superhuman speed to and from squalor is the future. Subsidized by your tax dollars, Musk can achieve anything.