Skin pressed to a glass wall
flesh taken the shape of servitude
and lungs filled with a feeling of dying
Always only a whispered breath away
from falling on the edge of a knife
And who knows what secrets then would spill out
and run in little rivers over the floor
between our footprints in the dust
Even those we didn’t know we were keeping
now out and withering away
as to the distance between us we return
the magic spell slowly fading
and hands reaching for a familiar poison
as eyes averted gaze out to the lights far below
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“The concept of ‘mental health’ in our society is defined largely by the extent to which an individual behaves in accord with the needs of the system and does so without showing signs of stress.”
Betcha can’t guess who said THAT.
Do you agree or not?
—
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Photo by Kai Oberhäuser on Unsplash
The Light is On 
15 responses to “Knife Edge”
I agree. Society turns the human into a mental case and then sells them drugs or blames them for their condition.
as for the quote, I looked it up. Was it by the “unibomber?”
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Yes, Ted Kaczynski. What he did was horrific, and yet I don’t think his ideas can be written off as insane. A touchy subject!
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I love topics like this. It all depends on perspective if someone is insane or civil. Every society is a hodgepodge of hypocrisies. at least i feel that way.
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Definitely think that you’re right!
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Yep, Ted Kaczynski. Maths academic before becoming an anti-technology terrorist.
Great quote, and I absolutely agree. (But then I’m a physics academic, living in the bush and growing my own veggies… hmmm… and I’ve been a told by a senior colleague that he was trying to “gently correct my systematic misperceptions” when I got angry at him. hmmmm… write him a letter? ).
I really enjoy your writing, and especially this poem and quote.
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Ha! How is the garden?
It’s so strange to see the writings of a man who committed those acts (his manifesto) and not be able to disregard it as the ravings of a madman. He saw a logical threat in the world, and only acted against it in what could be called an illogical way I guess?
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I wouldn’t argue that what he did was logical, but I don’t think anyone is completely logical. We all have a lot of inconsistent beliefs, and irrational behaviours. As psychology and economics research keeps showing. And lots of people we consider insane have said insightful things – maybe you have to be a bit outside the norm to have some types of insight, or at least to utter them.
The garden is going great, thanks, even in these shortest days of winter – it’s been so unseasonably warm that I literally still have tomatoes ripening when they should be long dead from frost. Now, if enough of us got together to send letter bombs to powerful climate change deniers….
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[…] instead of a rant, just a thankyou to SB for giving me some of these words, and DMR at ‘the light is on’ (love your blog) for inspiring the rest with his poem ‘knife edge’ and the Unabomber […]
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Thanks for the shoutout! (:
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It’s an incredible poem, as in exquisitely expressed…I related to it too well, unfortunately. I didn’t know the quote’s author–but it’s so true.
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Thank you Rhen. Hope you are well (:
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You’re welcome. Some days, I am 🙂
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It is a good quote and there is something to add to it…someone who is either providing or taking from the “system” while showing no stress is afflicted with a significant illness, however, it is understood (accepted) as normal to be alive that way.
It is important to recognize that there are people providing the authority that is “the system” (whether it be 1) police, 2) hospitals/food/drugs, 3)religion/organized crime, 4) intelligence community/movie industry/tech) and people agreeing to understand it (live within it) who are not well in either camp, never at peace and not participating at knowledge purposed to depreciate uninteresting areas of life out of sight. We will never be without the 4 systems because they are functional, but we are not supposed to agree with it. Ted Kacaynski and people aware to part to of something like him do not understand that the system has a purpose, but he was right to not want to live within it and to want people to understand about it. Ultimately, it is supposed to happen that AI is the system and does the receiving and no more human beings are understood that way…waiting for that!
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Interesting breakdown! I agree with you that AI is inevitable, because humans are never going to stop innovating until that innovation brings about either some higher plane of being for us or destroys the species altogether.
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Good deduction.
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