How to breed a nation of drones, cowards and weaklings
Yesterday Warren Cottis from Australia asked me what I study nowadays and I mentioned some books.
I love history, and read a while ago an excellent book about Alexander Pope, who wrote some 300 years ago that "The proper study of mankind is man".
He was right, of course. People are by far the most intriguing, worthwhile object of study. Their follies and eccentricities constantly entertain, appall and astound me.
Take this sign, to be seen at many points in Bristol Temple Meads station. Ignoring (with difficulty) the silly slogan some fool stuck at the end, it assumes that all passengers are half-wits. I believe that as you treat people, so they become.
In the last 60 odd years nanny governments in their insatiable desire to control every aspect of our lives have succeeded in making half the nation fit for nothing.
So one can hardly blame the feckless millions who in fact do nothing except collect money just for drifting though their pointless lives. That is how their masters have trained them to behave.
Depressing.
Having written all that and read it with a certain quiet pleasure, she who is smarter than me then said "Actually, I think the signs are up because some bastard sued them."
Two thoughts come to mind.
1. Nobody should be allowed to recover damages because they didn't use the wits God gave them.
2. "First, let's kill all the lawyers" - Shakespeare, Henry VI
After I wrote this we went shopping. Outside the Odeon cinema is a sign "Fanatical about film".
P. S. I don't know what the hell's happening with the spacing on this.
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