With this Coronavirus thing a lot of us old ones won’t be around much longer. I can’t speak for everyone, and don’t intend to do so here. But a lot of us will be sorry to go.
Here are a few bits of advice. I know — it’s tough to listen. We left you with climate change, populism and economic stagnation, so what do we know?
All that aside (is it possible to put that aside?) here is some advice that I think is important for you to know.
1. READ
This means books. Remember, you don’t read real books online — usually just bestsellers or blogs. Real books were, many of them, written a long time ago. A lot of real books were written by white men — Shakespeare, Proust, Tennessee Williams, to name a few. But there’s also Virginia Woolf and Emma Goldman, to name even fewer (Emma Goldman is VERY important!) and Amiri Baraka (just to name a fabulous non-white one). READ THEM. I know it may seem like a waste of time, at first. But if you sit down, turn the light on, and concentrate, it will open another world.
2. DON’T IGNORE HISTORY
It’s boring, I know. But people made a lot of mistakes in the past. You could learn a lot from a particularly significant historical mistake: The Holocaust. It’s something horrifying that you must never forget. You need to understand history, but if you absolutely don’t care, then just remember this. All of history can be summed up in a single phrase: ‘human beings are capable of limitless evil, and often in the name of the noblest of causes.’
Please, please don’t forget that, ever.
3. SEX
Have it. Every consensual sexual act is an act of love. I know a lot of you aren’t having much sex anymore; declining birth rates in the west tell us this. And I know that sex is messy, inconvenient, and often embarrassing. It’s tough to get naked and mix it up with another living breathing human — but you can’t pretend that what goes on ‘down there’ is not important! You have a physical body. It has desires! (Ones you don’t even know about!) If you shame yourself for your desires, you do so at your peril.
4. LOVE PEOPLE AND TOUCH THEM
This is perhaps the hardest one. Have any kind of love, anywhere with anyone. Even if you feel particularly unloveable — join the club. Like the Beatles said — ‘all you need is love.’ You will die without it.
5. AND, FINALLY….HUMAN BEINGS ARE IMPERFECT: AND IT IS THAT IMPERFECTION THAT MAKES THEM BEAUTIFUL!
Yes, computers are more efficient. Yes, every day we replace more and more bodies and minds with cyborgian parts. I also understand that human beings are extremely flawed; they have flawed bodies and flawed minds. But it is those flaws that bring us closer to ‘The Goddess. ’ Or whatever it is you believe in.
Thanks. I just had to get this stuff off my chest.
