Old Rules

Here's something:

The reproductive imperative is basically universal

Be fruitful and multiply

Fill the earth and subdue it

And we tend to take God literally

Despite the fact that He must be the perfect poet

The master of metaphor, the sire of simile, the idol of ironists

And the translators, or transcribers, if you are more serious

Know that we will take the imperative literally

In that reproduction is really our most important function

The best way to be human is to make more humans

Everything you do should be focused on them, i.e., the fresh ones

Who love you

And depend upon you

And need you in moments of doubt and pain

Who thrill to your stories, oft repeated

Who, but a child, when a story is over

Does not object, or inquire, or identify plot holes

But says, with the rapturous zeal of a prophet,

"Again! Tell it again!"

People who love you like mad

For whom you would do humiliating things

For whom you would endure anything

Are the hostages that make you put up with this shit

Just to get by

To see them smile

You will dig that hole and fill it in again

For them

It's beautiful

Your devotion

The people who made things the way they are

And want to keep them that way

Know that

That's why those who wish to maintain the status quo

No matter how ugly, or dehumanizing, or absurd

No matter how petty, how vile, how mendacious

No matter how smirkingly nihilistic and inauthentic

Push you to bring in new participants as quickly as possible

So that you will endure almost anything, as long as they are happy

Because you know

That you got them into this

It's on you

Do not allow yourself to be patronized and manipulated

Be fruitful and multiply your ideas, your words, your deeds

The better to ensure that, when others arrive

You will know that they are as safe and happy and able to become

Themselves, as any dignified human being should be

Where things are subdued to that end alone

In order that they might astonish you with their daring

Their exquisite, impossible way

Of shattering all of your expectations

By revealing that they were too modest

Too content with very little

Too astonished by enough

Too dazzled by the film, or the novel, or the party

Or its overthrow

If given half a chance

There are philosophers and painters and physicists and pharmacists

In their way

They make all of us proud

Especially the nurses

But that should be the objective

To allow all of them to exceed themselves

And make us eager to reveal the truth

When we say

We are human

There are parts of the world we cannot change

Time

Space

Causality

The fucking copier

The rest is culture

The rest is politics

It's on us

They are on their way

The old rules are always fashionable somewhere

Change the things we can

Fill the earth and subdue it

With your wisdom, your courage, your temperance

Which do you prefer?

Being told the right way

Or shown the right way

With grace, and courtesy

Are we not all worthy

Of being shown the way

To becoming everything a human being can

By someone who has been there, and done that?

What is parenting, exactly?

Nobody has ever gotten it right

But many have tried

They write about it at tedious length

We are too used to the screen

The position of the passive recipient

The scandalized scanner

The doyen of doom scrollers

Taking it all in

Making nothing new

Human beings made our culture, our politics

The part that is not the weather

Human beings can alter all of that

We don't last for long

Soon, this will be what they see

We'll have gone for good

They'll inherit this

The disappointed freshmen, at our broken university

When they open their eyes

For the first time