Yesterday Warren Cottis from Australia asked me what I study nowadays and I named some books. I read a while ago an excellent one 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, appal 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.
As you treat people, so they become.
In the last 60 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 do nothing except collect money just for drifting through their pointless lives. That is how their masters have trained them. Depressing.
After I had written that and read it with quiet approval, she who is smarter than me commented “Actually, I think the signs are up because some bastard sued them.”
Two thoughts came to me.
1. Nobody should get 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 that we went shopping. Outside the Odeon cinema is a sign “Fanatical about film”. Silly.
