(For Roslyn Fuller)   Preamble   Einstein is credited with saying there are only 2 known Infinities. Human stupidity, and the the likely size of the universe. Only about the latter , he added, was there any doubt.   And so our rulers are aching to lurch us on to War, again. And most of us buy the puerile media and policy spin. Even those those! – especially those – who think themselves extra smart and savvy.   For many , it is anything but stupidity. it is canny avarice, as with the dozens of constituencies that profit directly from war. It is the most profitable and the largest industry going.   They dominate the media, and most of the government. And they game the game, and spin the spin.   It may be time to question the parameters?   * * * * * * * * *   Question: How did the governors gain such inordinate power?   Well, they never gave it up, for starters.   Medieval ruling elites turned over, in time, to Modern ruling elites.   Once power has been monopolised, i.e., usurped, by a sect , a clan, or a stratum – as is ever the case once simple tribal forms suffer dissolution – it is scarcely ceded : except perforce.   *   We are not speaking of some idyll of ‘democracy’ drawn from political fantasy(I offer no critique of the idyll – it is just that). But Modernist democracy. Or, even more accurately, EuroModernist Democracy.   A bit like when you study ‘economics’ it is not some universal template, as is the official pose. It is Modernist economics. Or, more specifically, EuroModernist economics. Even our ‘Nobel Laureates’ (what a joke!) are wholly unaware of that simple axiom.   *   Let me state the axial point: EM democracy is a tool (means) of legitimation of power.   It should not be mistaken for the ‘real thing’.   That gainsays, instantly, all the vapid distortions that informs discussions of the subject.   As Napoleon, canny political scientist, said it : you can do anything with bayonets except sit on them. You get the point.   *   Today, the Oligarchy has state power virtually sealed. As Santayana had it: democracy is the paradise that unscrupulous financiers dream of. And that our 1% have achieved, in abundance: we have the best ‘democracy’ money can buy.   The 2 Party system (wherever practised) is little more than a quasi Duopoly. And they play good cop, bad cop, every 2/4 yrs, depending on the electoral cycle. And we lap it up, like dutiful little kitties.   As someone very bright put it, if elections were effective they’d be illegal. Ponder that.   *   Keep the masses poor, insecure, and in irrevocable debt: and they won’t question a thing. As the old adage goes: family (wo)men, facing the above, can’t be heroes.’ And so, we don’t have any. Period. Except those that strut in cartoons.

  Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves. Mahatma Gandhi   If you can feel that staying human is worthwhile, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them. George Orwell   October 02 was Gandhi’s birth anniversary.   The usual tributes ensued: sincere, phony, and outright disingenuous.   My point here is simply to point, en passant, to a unique side to him that is not oft noted.   In a moment.   *   Gandhi and Orwell.   What could they have in common?   Both were born in India, both were deeply distrustful of Euromodernism (EM), both were passed over for appropriate Nobels, and both made imperishable contributions to universal human welfare.   One showed how awful EM could get (left, or right variants) for politics and civil society.   The other showed how this could be, effectively, resisted.   *   Orwell had no self-consciousness about EM, but provided its most trenchant critique (pointing to its immanent Dystopian tendency, in both its Left and Right incarnations).   Gandhi consciously chose non-Modernist forms of protest( practised , incidentally, by women , within the private household, for aeons) and, to the shrill indignation of All variants of EM (Left and Right) , went on to see his Project prevail.   With the taint of subjectivity (is that a taint?) I affirm that these two are, possibly, the most outstanding Public Citizens of the 20th century.   Happily, the two also symbolize East and West, North and South, to give it global relevance.   *   EM agendas (left or right) have brought us today to ( the brink of) extinction.   As Einstein said we cannot hope to solve problems using the same tools that created those problems.   It is not too late, possibly, to reconsider its inherent misanthropy, as understood by Orwell , and as resisted by Gandhi.   Else their efforts would have been, utterly , and tragically for all of us , in vain.   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  What if they throw WW3, without announcing it? What if? Well, guess what? That’s exactly what’s going on. WW3 is ON.   This is it.   It is different from the prior 2 Global Conflagrations. It is the 21st century. It is going to be different.   It will be in many little pieces. Here and there. Bit by bit. Much of it, below the radar.   *   Sanctions. That’s War. Where’s the mystery?   Who applied the sanctions? Where’s the mystery?   Using Media to whip up daily, incessant, hysteria. That’s war. Where’s the mystery?   Even the Pope knows what’s on, and has spoken. That’s a first, btw. Where’s the mystery?   It’s not a whodunit. It’s the Usual Suspects. Whence, a bit monotonous?   Where’s the mystery?   Sure, we can (and will) all take sides. Inevitable.   But it will not alter a thing.   So, which side of the Facts are you on? And where do you get your facts from?   *   WW3.   It’s on. I know, its hard to believe. But it is.   Are the Players self-aware? We hoi polloi don’t know (we never do).   There’s a thing called momentum. It takes over.   Not much we can do about it. It’s a Great Power Thing.   So. Honestly. Where’s the mystery?   *   One curiosum. Most, but not all, peoples have made wars. But only European rulers have made Global wars. Could be cause they ‘think Big’, in all things?   *   PS Ok, so you know, now: but don’t tell the kids.   Why ruin their hour in the sun?   Leave them be with their crayons, cornflakes, and cartoons.   Leave them their Halloweens, and holidays, to come.   They don’t need to know that, IF we get past Covid, there’s war, nuclear annihilation, and climate catastrophe.   As the bard has writ: where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be…   Besides, if they get lucky, and get to grow up at all, maybe they won’t grow up to be like us?   There’s a thought.   *   And so it goes. It’s the Human Drama. So, I ask you: where’s the mystery?   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  The passing of a fellow human is always a grim reminder. Ask not for whom the bell tolls! Is it any different with a so-called ‘queen’? What is a queen, anyhow? It beats me. Let’s call her Liz, and it makes far more sense. Excise the mystique. And one can then mourn her passing, like any other amongst us. I am sorry Liz is no more. Her family must be in some distress. The irony is that such institutions yet thrive, even today, squarely in the heartland of the various Western empires, despite the tendentious, high artifice of ‘democracy’. Not to mention a hereditary peerage! Per capita, these so-called royals must rake in a regal chunk of the public purse, even as 1 out of every 3 Brit children struggles in poverty. Do they possess a conscience?, one wonders. Modernism never quite displaced the medieval! O the governors of the Brutish* Isles: how they still game the game, and spin the spin. No matter. Present times have made much of all this near obsolete. It would be meet if all these glorified parasites , the world over, were to yield up their thrones and titles. Unfortunately their latter day replacements, the new rentier billionaires, would be no improvement. Therein, the tragedy of our times?   * I mean no disrespect to the populace of the nation in using this epithet: only its wretched power elites , who have looted the world, willy nilly, with wholesale impunity, for centuries.   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  I sing no more in lucent hue the heart is marred reft with rue   *   Near and dear left are few yet warble on in accents true sing not for me but for you   *   Talk not then of mice and men and maybe never talk again? and rave not of Michaelangelo once far away twice long ago?   *   The icons come the icons go what’s left is but a maudlin show where daisies wither and wild weeds grow   *   Sing not of sacral monument towers the sky looks down on (wo)men vanities that quick forsake the winter storm the summer quake   *   Life will fester blood congeal as we boldly chart the human weal until stupor does the spirit seal   *   Quo vadis mighty conqueror? no more than wilful wanderer rushed to meet an empty fate never timely often late   *   Hither you strut thither you lie beneath a patient ogling sky that but waits for you to ___   *   Kingdoms rust duchies fail for want of wisdom for want of a nail and you who bluster you who rail you who seek that holy grail where will you splendor ere you fail?   *   “Tis but a hapless once told tale no, you can never prevail though you be hearty though you be hale though you lusty cheer those strong arms flail   .   Your ship of life has long set sail caught in maelstrom lost in gale as wizards simper and witches wail   *   You rush in frenzy unready to quail to flush in frenzy to no avail   [© R.Kanth 2024]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  Let lifeblood simmer let life spirit congeal   We have been unlearnt learnt not to feel   Whence the world grows dimmer and we know not how to heal   *   The love force still rises in wan mute appeal   As life force reprises gone past its weal   ‘Tis a farewell to hope the spirit now must seal   *   Even the gods will not relent though I bow scrape and kneel   So summer flags to fall and I must take to heel   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  Angry Texas Mom Wants Gandhi Banned From School The Kyle Kulinski Show News Item   So, they love neo-Nazis and hate Gandhi. Nice. So much for the true mettle of some so-called ‘conservatives’. Why do we still use such antiquated terms? Is the KKK, perchance, ‘conservative’? Or are there more choice terns? I can think of a few, and I am no political pundit. Like I said, nice going. * Reject Gandhi today. And, why not?, Jesus tomorrow. It would seem to follow. But it should really occasion no surprise. Christianity’ is become, amongst some, as phony a cover for its exact opposite, as ‘liberalism’ is today. It is all egregiously Orwellian. Religion goes, as politics does: all is corruption, much is sheer depravity. Fortunately, the world at large is not gulled by any of this. That era is over. For good. * So , let it go on. Arrest peace-makers and tread on the meek , the poor, the homeless ( for, in this neck of the woods, it is the 1% that inherit the earth). And spend more on arms and WMD’s than the next half a dozen countries taken together, whilst screeching (did I mean preaching?) ‘human rights’ all the while. * But why bring Gandhi into this, in the first instance? To echo another idiom: Let’s not take His name in vain. He deserves better. Nay, a whole lot better. Purveyors of bigotry and hatred must have some local talent to pick on, surely?   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  There they came, wave upon wave, Titans of the mighty Tribe, goose-stepping Cadres of Civilization Mongers flying flags, bearing bright Charters vivid visions of scopious Human Redemption peremptory in short command Organized like generals with no intelligence overlooked to press all Rhetoric into instant Service of the Great Emancipatory Cause of Liberty, Life, and Lust for Unilateral Happiness   We, the Little People ,mired in Microcosms watched, waved, jumped and clapped as they marched in Grand Parade down from our meager perches in the craven cul de sacs of jaded loss of hope, reason and ordinary norms of Co-respecting Decency, with our own Philosophy of Bread, and the sweet Elixir of Collective Amnesia as they rocketed on overhead   Ribbons and flags, curled and fluttered, lay festooning the grandiloquent boulevards of Wealth and State as we scampered like mice After the March, to nibble the Souvenirs of the Great Epoch just unveiled by the Orchestra of Imperial Design-   Here Democracy, there Liberty Property, Rule of Law, all gaudy and glistering- and how we rushed to collect the swag run home, and gorge like expectant Children We celebrated in swoon all night long this Arrival of the Promised Day raising cheap, copious, libations to the health of our Great Captains who smiled rich, ravishing smiles and bared immaculately polished teeth of steel shimmering, glaring television screens distending the raucous audio of their Manifest Assembly in deafening bytes of syncopating timbre, tone, and Declamatory Excess   Then the last tanks rolled, clunking away – the P.A. systems fell sudden silent and the grim Mondays of somber Sobriety returned to haunt the ineffable Drudgery of our new Speedocratic workaday week- The Great Machine cranked, creaked its stilted wheels back on rails again as we sang the Song of the Shirt quiet now under our unsweetened breath   And then came the clumping, clustering Pictures blinking like sorties of streaming glow-worms dotting in digitals our Great Advantage bright proclaimed over the Perilous Planet as we set down dinner forks to digest its meaning for our limping lives as laser rockets razed the riveting screen and great plumes of Distal Destruction filled adult minds with unthinkable dread as children huddled struck dumb seeking comfort in their parents’ flinching eyes   Like merrymakers tossed dizzy off whirling roundabouts we re-inform our distrusting hearts of Logic, and the Great Game of Reason, played by the aerial Mandarins of State seeking shreds, shrapnels, shards of meaning in the obscure behemoths of hopeless Corruption of Speech, Image, Word, and new-fangled Archetype- but infertile assurance born of Impotence breeds not the sterile contentments of yore: and we stoop warily to wonder how and why and when we lost even the merest semblance of control   The music eternal blares and streaking strobes scan the hypertrophic universe, lit up like holograms of this barren Realm of Discontent, born of seething Madness, the Toxic nostrums of Smith, Locke the Buonopartism of Commerce and the Calvinism of rampant Greed become now

  There’s no more tears to shed   All’s been done or said   The grieving heart implores no more   Pleadings have all been pled   *   We sip slow from the cup of life   For we know what lyeth ahead   *   The night draws near   I have no fear   And I’m almost ready for bed   *   En passant let it still be said I too once savored Arcady And on its nectar dew have fed   © R.Kanth 2022   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  Do you cry when daffodils die and roses wilt on the thorn   Ask you why we live and die perchance why you were born   Or do you pass by never asking why from darkling dusk to morn   Idle thoughts and idle tears both keep us lone and lorn   *   Naught makes sense the fog is dense and we reap but rue and scorn   Uncountable have wept before wondered thence were gone   We are forsworn reft forlorn as night splinters into dawn   Naught we know of the universe save that it just goes on and on   Equally odd there’s no sign of god just concocted faith to lean upon   So though roses bloom O prepare for doom Nature bids us all: Begone!   © R.Kanth 2022   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  We live in it. And yet refuse to acknowledge it. How long will it take? 1.6+ mass shootings a day, and we still kid ourselves. Are we civilised? We are not even civil. A country that has been Has been At War 93% of its history (229 out of 246 Years) Since 1776.? And yet we plod , and persevere. Still deem it the best of all possible worlds? * Such is the power of (carefully crafted) ideology. We can miss what is plumb before our eyes. And yet fancy ourselves reasonable , thinking, folk? They can still get us to believe anything they wish.   +   So what can break that hold? Easy. Answer comes from our baseline (base?) amoral pragmatism. Just one weekend of bare supermarket shelves. And the spell will wear off, swiftly. No spin can alter that. Even sordid materialism has its strong points?   *   But the secrets of the system are even more dour. What are they? Keep the vast majority abysmally poor (19% have zero savings, at least half the country lives paycheck to paycheck, and we have the lowest minimum wage in the industrialised world) and they’ll work for nothing. [And that is not to mention long-standing race and gender splits. By way of illustration, the average white family in Boston has a net worth of about $250000. The average Afro-Am family (in Boston) has a net worth of $8.] Keep them also in irrequitable debt, and they’ll conform to anything.: an old Disney ditty says it, raffishly: I owe, I owe, so it’s off to work I go. [At $38000 per head , not counting mortgage debt , we are not the most indebted in the world, but we could well be the ones least able to discharge it.] Lastly, the sop: hold periodic elections that can , and do, alter nothing fundamental ,and yet, importantly, and endlessly, foster hope (the ‘yes we can’ subterfuge): and the iron cage is complete. Gaetano Mosca (Italian sociologist) would have called the above a neat ‘political formula‘. It is. And it works. * The worst thing about Dystopia is that it normalises dystopian behaviors, unto perpetuity. And we start to think there is no alternative (the TINA myth). Only those who have known, and seen, better, know that the above is not true. How many are there of that ilk?   *   Worse, not only are we dystopian, we (successfully) export this grim template to the world, via the usual standbys of cannon and chicanery. To alter Gresham’s Law, bad templates drive good templates out of business.. What is the impact of our inveterate greed, and our indurate aggression, on the planet? It is palpable. The world stands at the edge of calamity , owing to our machinations. Between Pax Britannica and Pax Americana. what , really, has changed? Nothing. They remain my favorite oxymorons. Regrettably.   *   Can this go on forever? No. We are on the brink.

  Waves smile in raptured glee   sky leans to kiss the heaving sea   trees sway on merrily   as waking spirit burgeons free   *   Neither evenfall nor high noon   it is come all so fast and too too soon   some vacant easeful hour of day   when east wind springs all fulsome gay   *   In jocund heady state of mind   hallowed time once left behind   a dowry of bashful tulip blooms   the lazy bower sweet festoons   *   Birds hover flying low   earth still keeps on spinning slow   All lie in some inebriate swoon   lost in love of afternoon   *   Dusk will swipe these joys away   but dusk is oh so far away   so let it frolic   fet it play   for every sprite must have her way   *   Before we leave O all too soon   in cool breezes and a madding moon   for leave we must O all too soon   The love this light and the afternoon   [©R.Kanth 2024] Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (A Novel), A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse), and Farewell to Modernism (Political Economy Tract).

    γνῶθι σεαυτόν* Ancient Greek Aphorism   *   Let us pledge allegiance to the Truth – which follows.   Mind, I speak, often, in allegory and allusion: in the idiom of prosetry (prose interlarded with poetry) that I have developed to express myself.   *   The greatest sacrilege of EuroModernism (EM , henceforth) was to turn a band of convivials – permanently – into a company of strangers.   That is Human Devolution, in a nutshell.   *   A human society (I call it the original anthropic society) is built on the stadial supports of family, kinship, and community.   All simple societies exhibit this essential character.   When stripped of those healing bondings, we turn into zombies, flirting with insanity, anomie, and angst.   *   The greatest danger to the human weal has always stemmed from the ubiquity of male violence.   It was the genius of simple tribal society to enchain that threat within the bonds of affection(s)   No other mechanism has ever even come even close to that apt, and amicable, resolution.   It still remains the only way.   *   We are animals, whence instinctual beings, sharing much of our genes with chimps and bonobos.   Males appear to exhibit chimpian traits, women bonobial behaviors.   Both are instinctually given.   Women and children form the first , enduring, social units, and women are also the first peacekeepers – as they have to create a cordon sanitaire to protect children: from Man and beast.   The domestication of nature and men is a civilisational requirement</em>.   Women ‘tamed’ men by corralling them within the bonds of domestic felicity, i.e., through love.   *   Simple societies(most, not all)devolve into empires, owing to male adventurism, – akin to so-called ‘animal spirits’ – that breaks free of kinship restraints.   When that occurs, the ‘feminine’ Social Economy of Affections caves to the familiar, ‘masculinist’ Political Economy of Interests (that constitute ‘class societies’).   That is the tale of the real ‘Fall’ of (hu)Man, as opposed to biblical fantasies.   *   Contrary to EM shibboleths , we cannot just announce ourselves, with suitable declarations and manifestos, into a species other than who we are (any more than we can renounce our instinctual traits).   That is simply a myth: and we are rather consummate myth-making animals!   The ‘social engineering’ of EM (socialist or capitalist) will always fail, if/and at spectacular cost.   EM fails for not knowing the baseline facts of human anthropology (wilfully, or not) : that we are co-operative convivials who thrive only in face-to-face, Gemeinschaft, communities.   So the Gesellschaft nature of ‘nation-states’ makes them wholly inimical to human welfare.   Socialism failed for not understanding this, even though Marx got his famous idyll from tribal formations (that he saw as ‘primitive communism’).   Once we enter that engineered domain of ‘organised from above’ formations, we enter the Michelsian world of an implacable Iron Law of Oligarchy.

  He stands Alone let that be said above us all leaders or led   Held his place lofty alone as we skirmished below for decades on   Yes have I railed And ranted too held his feet to the fire Till oft he turned blue   But any day of the week there is none like him as we come and go to sink or to swim   *   Whence comes his kind? I do not know   When here and now meets long ago? or time and tide weld in evenflow?   *   As I just said I do not know   But this much is known still is such a One We the Light Seekers He the Sun   * btw this was writ early in 2021; since then, in my reading, Noam is changed, along with the world, and that is his prerogative – in verse form, I can only say:   Thought I did Noam – But, maybe, I didn’t really Noam?   © R.Kanth 2021   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  Marvin* (for Cory, Malini, and Anjana)   Flesh and bone he walked alone and watched the world go by   Wasn’t the kind to moan and groan when things went awry   Did his due paid his dues nor cared to question why   The quiet life kids and wife a roof beneath the sky   Simple needs simple deeds had enough in good supply   Brave and strong he went along let others do what they may   Kept his thoughts to his own self let others live their way   *   When time came he bore it all valiant to the last   Had done his best was time to rest the die had been cast   *   And so flesh and bone but not alone he left the world one day   Sans adornment or sham as he lived he passed away   * Marvin Meyer, an ex-in-law, passed on June 12, 2022   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  Nor imagined heavens nor vision of hells   Nor sombre tones nor temple bells   Nor still waters nor torpid swells   Nor sullen hills nor smiling dells   Nor seashore pebbles nor sparkled shells   Nor witches brews nor magic spells   Nor choral songs nor fading knells   Nothing the vagrant mood dispels *   Under sky aflame with azure blue   Some fill the void with Canaan hopes   I rinse the heart with rue   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda (Novel) , A Day in the Life (Novel), and Expiations (Verse)  

  When all’s said and undone   and pall lifts not with the morning sun   when the motley race is run   And shills who ran not have won   *   When sordid tales are spun   and you and blight are one   then must spirit retreat   yield up her lofty seat   and cringing take the heat   *   For all hearts break in meekness   all strength wanes in weakness   all peace rends in violence   and all speech brakes in silence   *   For all the hot air   the spirit lies bare   and all speech cedes to silence   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda, A Day in the Life, and Expiations  

  I live in the land of liberty   Where kids hang on leashes and dogs run free   *   Now a coast to coast theme-park named Zombieland   Where tourists could flock by sea and by land   Where there’s ever a parade and a marching band   To catch if they be (un)lucky and if they can   1.6+ mass-shootings a day   Holding high banners that proudly say   Love it or leave it it’s the American Way   *   Far away from here lies India   Marking today its independence day*   If it be not mindful who is to say   That it too might not go the American Way?   * India won its political independence from Britain on August 15, 1947   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda, A Day in the Life, and Expiations  

  Lemmings were , for long, falsely believed to commit mass suicide: truth is that it is we humans who have been doggedly self-subverting the existential conditions of our sojourn on this planet under the relentless grip of a pernicious paradigm that I have titled Eurocentric Modernism (EM).   As we, as a species, hover on the brink of disaster, it may be useful, albeit late in the day, to understand the asphyxiating ether we have been breathing under its duress.   *   The Antidote to the rational-legal formalisms of EuroModernism (EM) is an Affective Society (AS) based on kith and kindred (where society is but an extended family) All simple tribal formations bear that character.   It is where the convivial human essence (species-being) displays itself in open abundance.   No, it is NOT Utopia: that term is a vulgar, EM caricature.   There is no such thing.   *   EM did not move us from AS to EM in one fell bound.   In fact, European history shows various ‘stages’ of this change. From tribe, to empire (slavery), to tributary forms (serfdom) to commercial society (capitalism).   So EM did not invent Adversarialism, but enshrined it as a species-universal (as in Hobbes).   It did invent AI (Asocial Individualism) which negates all social and sociable impulses (The Reformation’s abrogation of Canon Law correlates was the ontic consequence of denying ‘works’ and societal welfare as worthy objectives of an organic society).   [In fact , as an aside, AI is the differentia specifica that separates all of Non-European,(and most East-European) Capitalisms from the high North European template: they subscribed to Capitalism (freely, or perforce) but devoid the noxious , anti-social , drives of EM].   And it also added the vital garnish of a venal philosophy of materialism so that the most sordid of craven motivations became the duly sacralised mainstay of both personal and public policy.   *   So we get the mechanistic robotised EM wherein we brush each other aside, daily, to gain either personal salvation or personal compilation of wealth (indeed, the latter leading to the former, in the Calvinist vision).   Hell is other people (JPSartre), we owe nothing to.   We were , thereby, systematically being alienated from our native, convivial , essence.   It may be useful to recall, since the matter is rarely addressed, that nowhere was EM ‘voted in’: it was imposed perforce even within Europe itself, after bitter, protracted, civil wars.   Rather strange, it would appear, that a putative ideology of ‘freedom’ had to be birthed in blood and baptised in fire!   *   This process of denuding society of its vital anthropic correlates creates the Dystopia we subsist in today, though in all mindless propaganda it is projected as the very acme of EM ‘progress’.   It is this ontic degradation, moving from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft society (a morbid, and even mortal transition away from our convivial roots) , that I term Human Devolution

  I am yet again summing up – in radical brevity – discoveries based on some 30+ years of reflection, albeit at a very high level of generality.   We live in a self-aware and spontaneous universe, both social and natural.   The Great Error of Modernist Europe (I term it Eurocentric Modernism or EM) was to believe that somehow we can engineer ourselves into this or that ideal, be it left-wing or right wing in inspiration   So, they compelled the rest of the world, and they still do it to this day: to follow this or that plan.   Of course , naturally, they preferred a plan that suited their own interests, of the time, as might be expected.   *   But the real problem is much deeper.   Like all living beings , we are instinctual in nature.   So we simply cannot be ‘programmed’ to achieve some, or other ideal: except very briefly , either by sheer force, or by dint of propaganda.   Men are far easier to program – they follow leaders, mainly because they are the programmers, and partly owing to a varying mix of male bonding and totemic fealty – but women simply cannot be easily, or effectively, programmed.   Because their instinctual awareness is much deeper, and they bear heavy responsibility for new life which is a far more vital concern than the more trivial issue of subscribing to this or that form of idealism , that comes and goes like fashions in couture.   *   A human society is always built instinctually , and spontaneously, on family, kinship, and community (all tribal formations arise in this fashion) , NOT on democracy, equality, and/or liberty which are but concocted political ideals.   I do not take up the issue here of whether they are good or bad, right or wrong: though I could, and in much detail.   That really does not matter; they are, stated simply idylls.   Once this point is grasped, the sources of the crisis of the EM world become transparently obvious.   Of course, one has to step well outside the EM matrix to glean this, which may be difficult, if not impossible, for many ( I can sympathise with that: for few of us could be expected to endure the exile that would ensue).   *   As I have said before, one needs an adequate physics to understand Nature, and , similarly, an accurate anthropology to understand society.   Unfortunately, EM constructed its social (including economics, politics, philosophy, et. al.) theory out of thin air.   As if all one has to so is to manufacture a fanciful manifesto, plim with high ideals :and, presto!, it can be realized (if at frightful cost, one might add) , just like that!   *   Time to rectify that error? I actually believe it’s past time…   [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda, A Day in the Life, and

  (for Fadhel Kaboub)   Scatter not pearls   Into thin air   They will fall   Or flounder   Some here some there   In traces abounding   Just everywhere   *   The swine* who crunch them   Champ unaware   Chew glass pebbles   With same placid air   *   Theirs the Kingdom   Theirs The Time   The Porcine Era   Of High grot And grime   *   They plumb the depths   They soar to the top   Heil Porkers Ebullient!   Cream Of the crop!   *   They swing high the Sceptre   They wear low the Crown   Sporting talismans   Of bell cap and gown   *   An Age in Retreat   In fulsome Defeat   With God absconded   Fled from Her Seat   All are subverted   The Rout is complete   *   Ethics denuded   Morals effete   Though it slay so surely   Ah the hemlock is sweet   Take a deep swig   Be with Evil replete   *   The Beast is upon us   No Exits Withal   In Spirit Defiant   Let us brace for The Fall   *   Judgment dismembered   Reason asleep   The Path be perilous   The Abyss is deep   What They have sown   Alas must we reap   *   Be vain To cry out   Look Even Lucifers Weep! * the term is metaphor only, following usage; no slur is intended against that noble, much abused, animal. [© R.Kanth 2022]   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda, A Day in the Life, and Expiations  

  “lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate”   Dante Alighieri, Inferno     Come have done with sanities those antique inanities those pettifogging vanities that marked our antic lot   Behold a Brash New Age profane is all the rage all hail the iron cage wherein we rail and rot   A touch of sleaze is fine a tad of slime divine bowed to that higher sign of grime grease and grot   All troth be scoffed away all gods bare feet of clay all norms perforce give way to this saturnalian plot   There’s none to question why so (cha)grin and Live the Lie stifling the wordless cry watching the life-spirit clot   No hanker left for peace craving luxury and ease ever ready to appease this realm of shell and shot   Can be no turning back for the courage that we lack sliding to ruin and rack as a world goes straight to pot   So yes have done with sanities those ludicrous inanities revel in vile profanities where spirit is sold and bought   No scope for hoary charities rarer than the rareties good evil both neutered parities all idylls amount to naught   Did It fall upon us unaware? or did we see and did not care? or did we care but did not dare to stanch what we had wrought?   Or was it some other-worldly plot?   © R.Kanth 2022   Professor Rajani Kanth, is Author of Coda, A Day in the Life, and Expiations