Screwism

"Oh foul religion! Why do thou divide mankind so?” - Myself  

Both Calvin and Hobbes are stretched out lazily on the side of a grassy hillock, staring up at a genial sky.

Hobbes asks Calvin, “Do you think there is a God?”

Calvin thinks for a couple of panels and then says, “Well…somebody’s out to get me.”

That was one of the all-time classic Calvin and Hobbes strips. And before I say anything more I would like to state that it is copyright of Bill Watterson. Just to be safe.

And it’s also highlights the kind of stuff that makes agnostics out of atheists.

Now why can’t what this notion implies be taken seriously? Don’t you ever get the feeling that someone’s looking out for you? You know…so that they can screw you when the opportunity arises.

As a rough estimate, I think it’s safe to assume that at least around 95% of people in the world manage to get through their lives without any ostensible or even imagined divine intervention. Yet a lot believe in God in his/her various forms and would even go as far as ostracizing those who admit to a not-so-cuddly relationship with the omnipotent one. These are the types that would try to attribute anything nice that happens to them to the existence of a higher power that sees all. I guess the comfort this thought affords is quite intoxicating.

And there are the intellectuals who get rabid at the mere suggestion of a god. What GOD? There is no GOD! The whole idea’s just a mass conception borne out of the convenience of absolving yourself of all responsibility for your own failures and ineptitude. It’s nice to think that you’re not to blame for messing things up. People flop and they say “This is the way God wants it to be. He’s got something better in mind for me. You’ll see.”

Karl Marx would probably support this second bunch of people. I’m not really that conversant with his works (that translates to ‘completely ignorant‘), but he is known to have famously stated once that “Religion is the opium of the people”. Highly interesting concept. But while I completely agree with the base idea, I would like to point out that he made this statement around 1943, a time when TV wasn’t exactly riding the crest of its wave (and Bill Watterson agrees with me on this).

I digress.

You can probably make out the superficial distinction that the intellectuals would like to point out as the difference between these two sets of people: The ‘not-so-existentially smart’ ones and the ‘higher IQ’ ones.

Well, my humble opinion is that the world isn’t just divided between these two sets of people. There’s a third set of guys too. The funny guys. And ‘funny’ here generally refers to both or either of the following:

-> A relatively developed sense of humour

-> A particular state of mind (as in "He's gone a bit funny lately")

This ‘funniness’ has generally been observed to impart a kind of wisdom or special insight to such people. Now don’t confuse this ‘wisdom’ with ‘intelligence’, a folly most people commit. Wisdom doesn’t necessarily translate into high test scores, a Mensa membership, or anything that material really. To put it simply, it’s the kind of thing you’d normally associate with Morgan Freeman whenever he pops up in a movie just around the time when the hero’s down on his luck and needs a bit of solid advice over running his affairs. I bet you get the gist now.

Such wisdom helps them see the world in a light vein. Most things aren’t that serious. There’s always something funny about things. Casual disdain for authority is another feature. And such people are generally almost completely devoid of both intelligence and enterprise, while possessing buckets of the aforementioned wisdom. Needless to say, this wisdom helps them to do little more than impressively sigh “What’s the point?” and misguide those deluded enough to ask them for advice.

But returning to the beginning of this post, the distinguishing feature of this species is that feeling of vague persecution that the C&H strip at the beginning alluded to.

Now let’s get the religious allegiances of these guys sorted before delving further into this morbid subject.

These people usually sit on the proverbial ‘fence’, neither here nor there. This is an especially evocative metaphor if you imagine the fence to be an electrically secured one, or one with really sharp points at the top. Obviously it’s not comfortable being on the fence, but what more do you expect from the dim wits of this particular species?

The logic commonly held among them is that since there is no irrefutable or unambiguous proof supporting the existence of God, it would be better not to take sides until the advent of such hard evidence. Yet they find it hard to rule out the possibility entirely too. Why? That sneaking suspicion that someone’s taking special joy in watching them screw themselves.

Any psych majors may have figured out by now that I consider myself a specimen of this not-so-distinguished tribe.

Consider this. One time I thought it especially entertaining to perform a somewhat scathing impression of a superior at work for the mid-afternoon amusement of a few colleagues. Guess what? Was within earshot. Result? Subtle yet effective office retribution takes root…I get screwed.

And these sort of things keep happening. Divine intervention when least required.

I know what a lot of people would call me at this point. Agnostic. And no, I beg to differ. I am just a supremely screwed individual. I’m a ‘Screw’.

Yeah, here gets birthed a new philosophy. Not religion, philosophy. I lay its cornerstone as of this moment. It’s called ‘Screwism’. I know, it rhymes with Jewism. No connections though.

I am a proud Screw.

There are no holy texts or reference points for the confused Screw. See…that’s why it isn’t a religion. It encourages free will. The only philosophy is that something supernatural’s out to screw us, which maybe implies the existence of something akin to a ‘God’.

A Screw could identify himself to a fellow Screw by pointing an index finger at his temple and drawing multiple circles to indicate the turning of a mechanical screw. Non-screws might take this as a wilful admission of instability, but such shamans of ignorance could be ignored.

Another way to address a fellow Screw is with a prosaic ‘Screw you’.

Before signing off, I would like to state one of the basic assumptions of Screwism. It says that “Girls by fundamental nature are Non-screws, since they generally seem to be blissfully unaware of any persecution or existential angst in their bright pink and yellow worlds.”

More fundamental assumptions and axioms to follow later...wait...I'm creating exactly the sort of thing I hate...dammit...

Screw crappy human nature!!

Screw you all. Screw everyone.

P.S. If whatever I’ve outlined above seems too unfocused or theatrical, I can only say that if they were alive, Nietzsche or Goethe would have understood me…although I have to admit that I don’t usually understand them…

Hollow Man Turns to Verse

To put it bluntly, this post comes after an incredulously unproductive phase of approximately a little over a year and eight months (the last one, as can be verified below, came in Feb 2008).

Now one might be easily led to conjecture that such a period of inactivity could only be explained by some kind of counter-balancing heightened activity in some other area of my life. Sad to say…far from the truth. In fact, this post comes just after the end of an epoch that lends itself most aptly to a few choice epithets along the lines of the cruel word ‘vacuous’.

People who have deemed it necessary by this point to chance a glance at my previous post might have noticed that it chiefly deals with an analysis of the sort of apathy that has led to the passage of a few millennia between subsequent posts (my current average is a scorching 1 post per year). I have no intention of repeating that again since empirical evidence clearly points to the utter uselessness of such an exercise.

It seems altogether more prudent, however, to post an obituary of the recently-deceased epoch mentioned above.

Forgive me if at some point it starts sounding a bit too lyrical, but I just can’t hold back on that. For those bereft of an appreciation of the works of Milton or Eliot, I advise that you consider using the multiple tabs feature of your browser to alleviate the possible feeling of what might at first seem like a damp cloth thrown over your head.

This epoch I sing of...was an age of near-complete internal emptiness, sprinkled with the right amounts of apathy and cheerful self-deprecation. Sigh!

Oh, the romance of waking up after the sun is firmly on its way to a right angle with the ground! The bright joy of screaming out for food as soon as the eye finds itself able to distinguish distinct shapes, and then someone actually answering your call! The comfort of slipping into a crumpled t-shirt with far-from-matching pants! I should stop. Suffices to say that now-a-days I find myself waking up at 5.30 a.m. in the night (yes, "night"), a time I had hitherto presumed was the witching hour, somehow vaguely associated with Halloween.

Turns out there are no night-watchmen at that time since most people seem to hold the opinion that, by definition, night-watchmen should be employed "only at night". What rotten bilge.

And I find myself wearing a necktie to work these days. To say that it is utterly revolting would be like remarking "That Scarlett Johansson looks nice, eh?". What practical purpose does a tie serve anyways? Except maybe providing your manager with something to easily latch onto when he/she has just created a worksheet detailing the productive output of each resource on the project, and your name subsequently finds itself in a cell with a red highlight. Yeah, that’s got to be it.

Now the result is that all of this has driven me to poetry, which, at least in my book, is a manifestation of the lowest state of being a jolly fellow can lapse into (and that's counting megalomania and imagining that you are a super-villain ready to take over the world based on the fact that you have managed to procure a tank with a few menacing sharks swimming in it).

Below, in a few disturbing verses, is an outpouring of the innards of my soul. A distillation of the mythical age I speak of and my present emotions regarding it. The title of the piece is Sniff Sniff.

A time there was not so far in the past

I regarded my blithe existence with contempt

An hour that saw me dress so crass and fast

It mattered not if I looked unkempt!

A jaunty run brought me to the office bus

Near my home so sweet

Only at times did I take a rickshaw with a cuss

Blaming the fares so steep!

Empty gazing through the window ensuing

Ensconced in my corner seat

Children shitting and aunties screaming

To the sound of Metallica’s beat!

Then it seemed the sky grew dark

As the hour grew nigh

Stray dogs started to bark

As the office building loomed in front and up high!

Little did I realize then

How fair were my workplace and its folk

It seems like a veritable Eden

Compared to lousy Pune and its own crappy folk!

Now I find myself depressed supreme

And distant from my previous life so nice

I was tempted by the scent of money green

Oh, it came at such a heavy price!

I realize that was one crappy effort and made no one even contemplate feebly about smiling (as some of Milton's and Eliot’s work have reportedly done on occasion). My defense is that it was meant to be crappy and that me being a person of very cheap emotions, even such an effort should be taken in context.

I started writing this post with the aim of it serving as a catharsis. The real upshot, of course, is that now there definitely is a very damp cloth over my head. One that it seems, from the feel of it, Andre the Giant had used to wipe his posterior with after a bath in a violently forceful waterfall.

P.S. Never read either Milton or Eliot. I’ve heard their stuff works on your character and crap. Shiver.