Wednesday 31 October 2012

Give Up and Let Them Lose.


 We're all agreed on certain things in life. Don't negotiate with terrorists. Don't give in to bullying or threats. "Never," as Churchill had it, "in anything, great or small, give up."
 Well, I've got a better idea.
 I think we - humanity, all of us - should have a sponsored month of giving up. Just thirty days or so of caving in to the most powerful, insidious, effective force on the face of the planet.
 I refer, of course, to whingeing.
 I'm pretty sure that no matter how many piss-poor VHS tapes Al Qaeda releases, nobody is ever going to kowtow to their plans. No matter how many times the Westboro Baptist Assholes show up to protest a funeral and complain about god hating fags, none of us is ever going to turn around and say "y'know what, okay, we'll listen to you and act on your ideas."
 Nagging, on the other hand, is a different ball game. We all know what it's like to just sigh and give up to the relentless, irritating pressure of a nagging child or spouse, and I think we should apply this policy to the wider world, because it would be an effective way to (eventually) get a lot of people to shut the fuck up.
 Take the meditation crowd. The people who think that all the world's ills are caused by a lack of Buddhist chanting.
 According to hippies with bad websites, if 1% of the population of the world meditated regularly, there would be no more wars and everything would be hunky dory. They've been peddling this shit for years, so why don't we just do it? Give in to their whining and do it.
 One percent of the world's population (assuming a population of seven billion) is seventy million, which is coincidentally about the population of the UK. So, I say we all take the week off work and genuinely try it.
 We'll all sit at home for a week, light some candles and meditate, and it'll solve precisely dick all.
 Worse than that, it'll deepen a recession and we'll all lose our jobs, but the net gain is this: The hippies will shut up and we can take their ideas off the table forever. We tried it your way, Moonbeam Unicorn Jnr., and it didn't work. Now piss off.
 Next up we can deal with the libertarians and the hardcore right-wing capitalists. This won't require missing work, but it might be worth calling in sick to watch, if the whole thing is caught on camera.
 Libertarians and ultra-capitalists claim to want no government oversight on business, no government interference in day-to-day matters (including healthcare) and freedom to run a business in any way they want to.
 So, a few commandeered planes would be enough to send them all somewhere that already has those conditions, like, say, Somalia. No government interference, no rules, knock yourselves out. It's a dog-eat-dog world in places like that, just the way you want it.
 Come dinnertime, of course, it'll be a person-eat-dog world because you'll all be starved past the point of dignity.
 If they realise how badly they fucked up and call to come home, we'll let them. But we'll charge through the fucking nose for it, and maybe they'll learn their lesson.
 Which complaining assholes are next? How about bigfoot hunters?
 There are all kinds of idiots running around the wooded areas of... shit, everywhere, really, looking for giant ape men.
 If they're so convinced there's something out there, why don't we take a few hundred people - a few thousand, if necessary - and create a human chain around an area of alleged bigfoot habitat. Then we all walk towards the middle, and shoot everything we come across that's bigger than a squirrel.
 A little cruel, sure, but at the end of it, as we sort through the bear carcasses and start cooking some nice venison, one thing we'll probably notice is that none of the bodies we've come up with are those of a heretofore unknown missing evolutionary link.
 Also, again: Free venison.
 And in the unlikely event that we DO catch a yeti, then science benefits. Granted, not the branch of science that does a lot to improve your life - I doubt shooting a sasquatch will do much to improve your 4G connectivity or diminish the lines at airport check-in desks, but it'll give the biologists something to talk about, bless 'em.
 These are just three random examples of how we could deal with the more annoying sectors of society.
 Don't give in to threats or demands, just give people enough rope to hang themselves with.
 Obviously, things like Islamic fundamentalism couldn't really be rolled-out worldwide on a trial basis, so we'd have to let them fuck that up for themselves on smaller scale.
 Except they already did; it was called the Arab Spring.

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