Majority Rule
“Sanity is not statistical”,
truth not just belief,
but mankind cowers against itself
when the combine bares its teeth.
Note: The first line is a quote from George Orwell's 1984.
truth not just belief,
but mankind cowers against itself
when the combine bares its teeth.
Note: The first line is a quote from George Orwell's 1984.
posted by TwistedNoggin at 7:03 PM
6 Comments:
Why:
One reason I like writing brief poems, is that I think most people glaze over words and see only generalizations as well as their own concepts.
These shorties force one to pay more attention, I hope, to what each word means - something that would benefit us all in daily communication.
Just like the very short and simple line "truth not just belief". It's short, easy to skip over. But, if you care enough to see the meaning, it should be obvious. Just beleiving in something, like if you choose to beleive whatever thought seems the prettiest, does not make it true. I'm amazed how many people seem to think that just beleiving in something, without need for reason, makes it true.
Every word means something here.
More info than you wanted, no doubt, but thought I'd share.
hmm, just wondering what the combine is all about. i think i have a pretty good idea, and i like it as such. feel free to inform me of your interpretation, as you have stated above....
The Combine I refer to is my interpretation of the Combine that the Chief feared so much in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
To me, it’s that incompetent hive mind that takes over when men become mob, when people become society, and it is the detestable thing that drives mankind’s potential into the ground as we neglect truth and reason and cling to every sway of the sea of mankind – when we let society do the thinking for us and thus embrace every sort of ignorance out of either some foolish fear of standing out or just plain laziness.
A tangent about being visual:
When I re-read this poem myself, I often see the wires/threads/web that make individuals act as a unit, the wires that most people can't seem to see, tangle up and rise into a roaring mouth. The brain-dead masses stare at their feet, shuffling blindly, and are hearded like mindless cattle by the snap of those anthropomorphic wire-mouths. But then, I'm a very visual person. Any words I hear, I tend to see happening in my mind. And when I'm around most people, I admit I see them this way, zombies dangling on the wire-leashes of a master, unaware even of the collar that binds them.
Maybe it's insulting to see people like that but, sadly, that is how I see most people in life.
When I go to the pub I to chat or just listen, I may see one man struggling at the tangles and knots of his own insecurities, bound up so tight I'm amazed he can function, while others just see a charismatic speaker.
Or I may see a group walk in, tripping all over eachother trying to walk without taking a step out of sync, always watching eachother's faces for approval because they can't think for themselves, and they look like freakish siamese quintuplets to my eyes, while they look like fun normal people to everyone else.
Sorry to get so verbose, and I don't know if that even makes sense to anyone, but that's the world of mankind in my eyes, most of the time. All of us have a few kinks in our own internal wiring, and some less ties to the mass than others, but that's it in a nutshell.
"Most", eh? I'm curious about that. Of course, I know of many ways in which my intellect fails me (spelling and memory for names probably takes the #1 spot on the list), but I'm curious as to which bits you view as missing.
Mmmmm . . . "the combine" what a great way to describe humanity when it (sometimes) becomes an unthinking mass.
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