Further thoughts on Occupy The Earth

Which, for those with big flists, is here.

The obvious person asked me (over in filk) if I really intended to shoot seven hundred million people into space. Well, the obvious answer is NO, DUH, but I should perhaps elaborate. For one thing, one per cent of seven billion would be seventy million by my reckoning. For another, Westbury isn't prioritising its space programme at the moment, and for another, I don't actually approve of murder. I may not be a Nyrond, but I believe it behoves us to behave as if we were deathblocked and take the time and make the effort to look for other ways. Also it would be letting them off far too easily.

The "send them to Mars" bit arose, as I said in the lyrics post, because I ran out of useable rhymes for "Earth" (I couldn't make "girth" and "mirth" fit, and I really didn't want to repeat myself) and I'm afraid it cheapens the song, but there's not much I can do about that now. The idea of "occupying the Earth" is more about taking on board and owning the idea that it is, if it's anybody's planet, ours (the 99%'s), not theirs, that we do not live on it by their sufferance, and that its destiny should not be determined by a few robber barons to whom only wealth matters. It's about living *on* the earth, being here now (and yes, living in the moment, I suppose), not letting another day go by without trying to make a difference. Or it should be.

The obvious person also allowed as how once I had shot off the first one per cent I would then have to shoot off another one per cent and so on, because obviously I am a machine with no independent will or reasoning power. I'm not sure what percentage of the wealth the one per cent are currently deemed to hold, but I am fairly confident that once that were spread equitably and appropriately among the ninety-nine per cent (assuming such a fairylandish transaction were ever practicable) a great many of the problems of the world would be eased and no further percentage calculations would be necessary or desirable. Straw man, in other words.

I hope most of those who listen to the song will take it in the spirit in which it was intended. I know some will not. Them, as I believe they say over there, is the breaks. But I'm not proposing to enter into stupid arguments about it.

Another possible lyric

Building a road from the past to the future one stone at a time,
Jotting down lines on the sights that I see there, and glad when they rhyme,
Some days are better than others, and some days are better let go,
And all that we have to go on is the little we know.

Wise men and soothsayers sell you the secrets of life for a song,
Take what they tell you with cellars of salt but don't tell them they're wrong,
Easier far just to take it on faith than to prove it ain't so,
When the evidence fails and you're left with the little we know.

There'a a game that we play
Called "the truth is whatever I say,"
But to tell truth from lies,
Use your eyes...

Vast ancient monuments crushed to make way for construction that's new,
Tottering towers of theories founded on facts all too few,
Dogmatic statements are dangerous friends when there's not much to show,
And not all that much you can prove from the little we know.

Trillions of words wrapped in billions of books stacked on light years of shelves,
hand us the answers we're too scared to look for inside of ourselves,
But if what you seek is not in you, you know you can search high and low,
And all that you'll find is contained in the little we know.

Put the blame where you choose,
That's a game where the players all lose,
While the truth in the word
Goes unheard...

My road is different from your road and each of us travels alone,
Searching increasingly further and wider for fragments of stone,
Weighed down by years while the doubts and the fears and the weariness grow,
And all that remains when we're gone is the little we know.

And sometimes it's tempting to lie by the roadside and go with the flow,
But on the horizon the bright future beckons us on with its glow,
And whether we'll reach it or not is uncertain, our progress is slow,
But one way to do it is add to the little we know.

Is it worth trying to disentangle it from "Golden Gypsy" long enough to find its own tune?