Bagpipe

I classify 6 overlapping and mutually-implicit cannibalisms. Some examples supplied: 1. The Cannibalism of Meat (but only once per victim, and of one’s own not at all. Not very efficient.). 2. The Cannibalism of of Money (slavery, involuntary prostitution, taxation, conscription, loansharking, gambling, politics, war, other theft. Somewhat more efficient). 3. The Cannibalism of of Mind (fraud, bad law, plagiarism, propaganda, emotion-pandering advertising and salesmanship, cosmetics, dressing-up, bullshit-in-general.) 4. The Cannibalism of of Soul, in which the cannibal devours one’s free will in order to conquer and even reproduce his soul by forcibly implanting it into his victims’ heads (religion, brainwashing, indoctrination, subjugation through fear, hereditary identity and obligation, public education, collectivism, racism, hereditary class, statism, parasitism from below as well as above, etc. Not to be confused with proper parental guidance.) 5. The Cannibalism of of Self (self-sacrifice: to believe that any of the above are necessary, good, or holy, and to willingly participate therein.) 6. The Cannibalism of Totalitarianism (all of these combined: 1984, militant religion.) Ayn Rand is the first person to blow the whistle on and understand all these, much better than I; and Objectivism is the first and only way to fight them consistently and thoroughly.

It is easier for people who do exist to prove that they don't than it is for people who don't exist to prove that they do. Or don't. (RB) Also the easiest way to pass a camel through the eye of a needle is to put him through the blender first. (Lex Barker). This question is equivalent to asking Nothing why all of a sudden it created Something, instead of relaxing and continuing to do the same Nothing as usual. But Nothing does not exist, it is only imaginary, provided some kind of mind is imagining something that ain’t so. So what is “in” it, what does it “consist of ”? Lies, mistakes, nonsense, impossibility and fiction: all the notions that contradict the facts of reality. You may be outraged by the cavalier fashion with which I insert fiction into this otherwise odious register of arraignment. In that case, I invite you to tell me where you are putting the Empire State Building to make room for my latest crocodile farm on the block between 5th and 6th and 33rd and 34th. The real headache is the Present Tense, which is the only thing that exists, even though it disappears into the Past the very instant it arrives from the Future. Even so, may I also invite you to make the most of it while it lasts, if you want to call that living. RB

This is really a very fine piece. RB