The concept of one’s lack of ability to empathize fully with problems on the other side of the globe when the daily grind barely leaves us enough room to run home and watch a shitty show on television is not a reason to stigmatize the youth with guilt and forcefully implied pretences of our bad intentions. It’s funny how we watch wars on the news and listen to political music, when half of everyone I know has more issues bottled up in their left pinky than any shrink in the world could ever freudify (yes, that is a made up word). The cute part is that most of us will turn out okay anyways, maybe shrewdly normalized to conform standards, but still “okay” in the general conception of the world.
But random rant is random, what I really meant to bring up was something completely different. And thus a theme is found needing, and this sessions overlaying plot will hopefully unfold in the following paragraphs.

Toni Morrison published a novel called “The bluest eye” in 1970 that influenced many great artists in its wake, one of them being the supremacy that is Talib Kweli. I know it’s pretty lame to bring out one of the best MC’s in the game and maraud their inspirational origins like a wannabe-intellectual vulture, but great men are considered awesome for a reason. The ideas and concepts that fueled their imagination to conceive the works of art we play, decode, love and never forget are worthy of more than just a side-note under the trivia-headliner on a Wikipedia-page. The following lines were used as an inspiration to the “Thieves in the night” track from Talib and Mos Def’s Black Star collab from ’98:
And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good but well-behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.
The excerpt could probably one of the cleverest and dystopian texts regarding modern society that I could conjure on the spot, and while Immortal Technique probably topped it with some crazy clear-cut lyrics on some song I can’t come up with right now, this is what I will roll with if I ever have to recite a text in some artsy-class. The play on words in the nature of their etymologic range, the simple, yet meaningful closure regarding the modern man and the semi-ironic reference to our ideals, all in all a beautiful text if you take the time to fully understand it.

“for we were not strong, only aggressive”
Strength is not supremacy in form of physique or raw power; it’s quite often the opposite. The loudest person is usually the weakest in the room. To quote Karpe Diem: “Du kan slĂ„ hull i veggen, men hvor mange kjenner du som trenger hull i veggen?” In our modern society, the muscular and macho ideals are quite ridiculous, where the need of a six-pack really can’t be justified, while the hard-working father who sacrifices sleep, sweat and blood and basically everything to get his kids lunch to bring to school is just a common and sad conception of a burned out dream. While the guido that can push himself up from the ground a couple hundred times is really cool, one could start to debate what sacrifice really is. I’m sure it takes a lot of work to become big and bulky, but I’m quite convinced there are bigger personal forfeits to applaud. The glorification of a misconcepted strength-ideal is these days taken to a new high, the kids of today grow up watching the wrong kind of heroes.

“we were not free, merely licensed”
It’s impossible to discuss freedom without sounding like an anarchist these days, but the common conception that we are free could easily be contested. We are not free; we exist within well established boundaries and regulations that conform us to an ideal created by men that lived before us. Of course there’s also a need for things as laws, but mankind needs to understand the concept of freedom/licensed living to understand the fact that we’re shit out of luck unless we manage to bypass the systematical thinking every now and then. Freedom is a kind of radical codename that suggests a certificate from a higher entity that enables us to operate outside of human concepts like ethics, morale and judgment. Every single one of us lives by a license handed out the minute we are brought into this world, and unless we fail to conform to societal standards, we will take that license in the chest-pocket on the suit we leave in.

“we were not compassionate, we were polite”
Compassion is in all essence a form of sympathy conjured through awareness of other people’s feelings. How many people do you know that will listen to what you have to say, and really, I mean REALLY, take it to their heart and feel for you? Most of what we pass of as compassion these days is egocentric attempts of raising one’s esteem due to an outwardly jovial appearance. While we nod and smile and try really hard to seem interested, most of us really don’t care, we are just too polite to say we really don’t, or are brought up to believe that everything will turn out fine by our part as long as we play the nice person that listens well and come up with smart advice. This is the easiest role in the world to play; being nice takes no effort whatsoever. It sounds like I’m labeling every human being ever as evil, but I’m merely implying that our compassion has very limited range, we can only apply it to a few persons we truly care for, and the rest just receives sly impersonations that usually can be deemed Oscar-worthy. Politeness is overrated, most people would rather cry over honesty, than to smile because of a lie.

“not good but well-behaved.”
It’s not human to be good all the time, even though you think you know a guy that could never hurt a fly. That dude probably steps on ants instead. We are raised to behave, and we do so for the bigger parts of our life, but we always act according to our own interests and beliefs. Some souls may come off as kinder and friendlier than others, and they may very well be, but negatives exists in everyone. The dark corners in every human soul is not to be trifled with, and I’ll trust a guy who’s in touch with his ones and knows them, over the apparently nicer person beside him who tries to strangle them and be the good guy all the time. Somewhere along the way from our ancestors departure from Africa around 200,000 years ago, we lost most of the “good” part, and ended up as mischievous beings that dress in robes of “well-behaving”. The good part is never gone, it’s just so busy being suppressed by the personal pronouns regarding “I want, I need, I feel, I should, I have to,” as opposed to the fact that the good by our ideals is in what measure we do what we do unto others.

“We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life.”
We chase illusions of desires we possess trough adaption of alien ideals, while we let others be the judge of our accomplishments in life. “Courting death” in the sense of meddling with matters we as individual entities never wish to deal with, but we take them on to please those around us, whether they are close to us or just the public eye, while “thieves hiding from life” contrasts the fact that we lose ourselves in the pot of random desires and wishes and just pick up the common ones to roll with them and get accepted. We are all so very afraid of dying, that we never manage to fully live, we are reduced to shadows that are supposed to accomplish this and that, for the sake of others before ourselves. It’s all been said so many times before, yet it’s been forgotten even more times than it’s been put into text, so it’s basically human kind’s circle of doom consisting of the one’s that remember it, and the ones that need to be reminded. I just wonder if we ever will fail to remember it along the path, that maybe the thieves will forget to even try and court death, that the last little thing we have left in the world will be reduced to naught but a lifetime of waiting for the nothingness that spawns us to come back and take us.
#AustinPowersKilledIt- Rydis