Purpose

The purpose of the schools, right on up to the universities, is to produce bureaucrats. And the purpose of bureaucrats is not to understand a single word said to them that doesn’t fit their state-authored form. The form asks Are you white or black? You say, Uh, sort of pink; and the bureaucrat enters White into the Library of Congress.

But of course bureaucrats are people. And the purpose of people is not to understand a goddam word said to them: said to them by anything sentient: intelligent, honest.

At least we have churches to make a ritual of this very pattern. We always know that our forebears paid Caesar, worshipped ghosts, and kangarooed Jesus: simultaneously not knowing that we’re cookies from the same cutter.
Every museum will kill for a Van Gogh: without a clue that here and there under their knife is another Van Gogh. We burn new manuscripts to keep old bullshit warm.

Meanwhile, god lives, the truth lives, art lives. There are new prophets, new Van Goghs: spilling their guts, despairing, then spilling some more.

If humans were only willing to become human, that is to stop paying Caesar, worshipping ghosts, and monkeying the law, humans might live too.