You are on page 1of 4

Epistemology

I will get through this piece without a single F bomb just to prove to you I can do it.
I will use frig, ass, shit but that will be it, so the “sensitive members” of my reading
public will not be offended!

As a species, the human race has an overwhelming desire to acquire knowledge; it is hard
wired in us. We have to Know!!! Many of you might define Epistemology in a different
form, please don’t, I will kick your ass!

A case in point “Moi” I am not special or unique in any way, shape or form. I use to
think I was; but that point was brought home recently when I was “shall we say away”
~laughing~. This Dude I did not know and who did not know me was, giving a lecture.
Anyway, he nails me to a board much like an Entomologist would pin a butterfly. Almost
killed the bastard! The point is as much as we like to think we are unique we are not!!!
We are basically are all the same with slight variations. The variations I have are a
boundless passion, an insatiable curiosity and a natural ability to break balls!

I do not say this to blow my own horn but to elucidate. As a result of a family tragedy I
started a lifelong passionate pursuit of knowledge. It started with Herman Hess, the first
“hard core” dude I read. Now I was only twelve or thirteen at the time so I did not
understand a thing he said. I had to have a dictionary next to me which I had to use 15
times a page. I did it; most people use “context” to understand a word I HAD to know.
So from Hess I moved to Camus, Sartre, Kierkegaard, I needed the dictionary less and
less because I began to understand. From there I moved to History of the Punic wars,
Julius Caesar, Churchill’s History of the British Isles, Einstein, particle physics, quantum
mechanics, DNA replication, RNA transcription. I’m bored but almost done. As an
experiment try reading a 10 page piece on RNA transcription, Try it! Not easy. I buy a
bird feeder; look out the window, “Hmmm what kind of Bird is that?” “Look, it is in the
tree” Mowing the lawn, “what kind of weed is that?” SOOO Have to buy the Audubon
field guide for birds, trees, and wild flowers in North America! Point being, WE HAVE
TO KNOW! I am no different; I represent you, only a tad more passionate!

When In my first college I started a movement to get the friggen business majors thrown
out of the school. I wanted the whole business program removed. If you want to be a
corporate whore go to a corporation and do it there, do not taint this place of higher
education with your foul whore like business practices. I felt strongly about it and I
friggen meant it. I got thrown out of that collage. Oh Well.

When the State gets in involved with the acquisition of knowledge we are frigged! It is
usually to find better ways to kill each other. We are never satisfied; we need bigger and
more effective ways of doing it. It is what we do best! Started with sticks, stones,
swords, catapults, guns, artillery, mustard gas, germ warfare right up to what I call the big
fire cracker: The Atomic bomb. Even medical advances were fueled by warfare. The
object of war is to kill more of them than they kill of us. So, we had to save as many of
our guys as we could, not because we care, only because we want to win.
The big firecracker. Robert Oppenheimer is credited with being the “father of the atomic
bomb” He only ran the Manhattan project, which developed it. The Knowledge required
was cumulative, sort of like “dialectic(s)” I’ll bastardize it with: thesis, antithesis and
synthesis. This is an idea, a counter idea and new knowledge as a result of the argument.
This shit goes on and on and that is how knowledge grows.

Back to the firecracker. Einstein and several other scientist wrote to President Roosevelt
about how the Germans were building a really, really big firecracker. So Roosevelt says”
“How big?” “Well big enough to destroy a city.” Roosevelt replies: “we GOTTA get one
of them!” Oppenheimer heads the project and the bomb is developed. During the initial
“Trinity test” (irony?) He is purported to have said, "If the radiance of a thousand suns
were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now
I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Proud of that one aren’t you Bob.
Always wanted to send him a happy father’s day card during the anniversaries of the
dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Well I am, as I told you, a real ball
breaker.

One last point on the big firecracker. We are so figged up as a species that we recently
developed a “Neutron Bomb” Kills all the people but does less damage to the real Estate.
We are a practical lot.

The Famous Shaman Crowbeak, world renowned mystic and metaphysical purveyor of
absolute wisdom. Well what people do not know was that Crowbeak was walking around
eating magic mushrooms like he was popping tic-tacs! He was so spaced out he would
stagger around saying shit like “When leaf falls from tree and touched mother earth,
gravity is thus proven.” Someone overhears him and says, “What did he just say?
Sounded pretty deep.” Then, “When caterpillar eats leaves off tree, tree dies, and then
tree knows it was alive.” Pretty soon you have a friggen horde of people following him
around smacking there foreheads saying, “this guy is brilliant” people are writing his shit
down yelling “get me more paper” Point being, even if something does not make sense
the human mind will wrap itself around it and force it to make sense.

Rhetoric, which means I know more shit about a subject than you do. I am/was very
good at this because I had a secrete weapon” The Distinguished professor Wilhelm Von
Schwimm. Well he did not exist; I made him up, but would often call upon his expertise
on whatever subject matter I was debating to prove what point I needed to prove. “Well
according to the distinguished professor Wilhelm Von Schwimm Bla…Bla…bla…
Well point here is people do not like to think they don’t know something or somebody
and will except what you tell them because they do not want to look stupid. Try it!

Hang in there almost done.

Socrates! My main man! Developed the Socratic Method. You can read a whole bunch
of bullshit on this if you want but I can sum it up in two sentences and a quote. In fact
Socrates whole life! Not many people can do shit like that, well I am the poet! Here goes:
1. People don’t know shit.
2. When forced to talk long enough they will prove they don’t know shit.
I will need to call on Oscar Wilde for the quote, “Oscar if you would, please.”
“When you want to tell someone the truth make them laugh or else they will kill you.”
“Thanks Oscar, you can go back to the grave now.”

That is basically it. And they killed Socrates because he was a ball breaker and he did not
make them laugh. For example:
A bunch of Athenians are in the Parthenon talking about the latest play ‘Dancing with the
Nymphs” (And you thought ours was the only vapid culture? No, Vapidity has been
around for a long, long time.) “I believe Themistocles dance with Nymph Amalthea was
superior.”…”No dear Duceanees Lato and the nymph Arethusa were much better.” Well
in walks Socrates and the whole Parthenon rolls their collective eyes up to the sky and
say, Oh shit, here comes that ball breaker.” “He would ask well what do you mean by
better?” Duceanees would say I mean superior…. Well pretty soon Socrates would have
Duceanees throwing his arms up in the air say, “Alright I don’t friggin know leave me the
frig alone!” Well they killed him! Bastards!!!!!

What does all this mean? (God I love when I say shit like that) Well we have come full
circle, right back to the Existentialists: Nothing, life is absurd!
One last point and I am done. I am a Negative Empath, meaning I feel pain and sadness
with an intensity that would shrivel your soul. I had to turn off my emotions because I
could not take it any more.

Twenty Five years ago a young Father was driving down interstate 95 with his two young
sons in the back seat, it’s Christmas eve and they are singing Jingle bells and Joy to the
World and all of sudden an asshole in a pickup truck with the tailgate down and a large
unsecured motor in it hits a bump motor flies out goes through windshield and
decapitates young Father (giving credence to the theory that no two objects can occupy
the same space at the same time) A miracle the two young ones survived.

Can never, never get that out of my head it is burned in there and I still cry when I think
of it. (Yes, I recently turned on the old empathy spigot and I cry all day long)

Here it is:
1. We have to know shit.
2. Killing each other is a large motivational factor in the knowing of shit.
3. Even if we don’t know shit we will force ourselves to know shit
4. No one wants to admit they don’t know shit
5. When push comes to shove no one knows shit
6. What is the difference because life is absurd.

Well all wrapped up in a nice package, not bad even if I say so.
Life is absurd, however find your own meanings, make it moral, be good to one
another and choose your own God or higher power and believe. Else I will be forced
to come to your fucking house and pull a Socrates on you fucking ass.
Yea, I lied about the F bombs.

I remain, never humbly,


The Oddest of Poets

You might also like