Sure the song is a little clumsy and obvious, but its heart is in the right place.

I was listening to The Age of Aqaurius\Let The Sunshine In earlier and I was struck by a line that had always just flowed past me before.

It was the line “no more false divisions”. I was like, HELL YEAH.

Amen and pass the bong, Donkey Kong.

Because that is one of the core tenets of my humanism : the belief that there is more that unites us than divides us and that the world is full of false divisions that keep us apart from one another when we should really be together.

Bullshit morally meaningless things like sex, race, religion, and tribe pit us against one another in conflict while what truly matters – the fate of humans – languishes on the sidelines as an afterthought at best.

So I too long for the day when all the false walls come down and we all get together and forget about the superficial nonsense, realize that the most important thing is to love one another, and finally get to be truly human with one another.

I am not, however, expecting it to happen any time soon.

For you see, one of the many levels on which I am the queerest of ducks is that I am both a mystic poet and a hardcore pragmatist. That means I have very high ideals and will accept nothing less than plans that actually work in order to get them.

And you can’t get plans that will actually work unless you are realistic, and that means not falling for the trap of making things easier by creating plans in abstract, or filling yourself with the hot air of unfettered optimism and idealism and leaving reality behind.

Fuck that and fuck you if you are like that. You are worse than useless because you get in the way of those of us determined to actually fix things and draw others like you into intellectual cul-de-sacs to morally masturbate one another while cooing and gooing over what nice people you are while the world literally burns.

The forces of evil could not even concieve of a better ally.

So get the fuck out of the way or I swear to God, I will go right through you.

Because this is grown-up time, kiddies. and we have things to do.

Seems inconsistent with all my peace and harmony talk from earlier, doesn’t it?

It isn’t… I am actually expressing the same thing two different ways. The tone has changed but the message remains the same.

So if you are all butthurt about my angry tone just now, you need to admit to yourself that you don’t want to address the substance of what I am saying, so you attack the tone of it instead.

“How dare he talk to me like that!” you cry, totally not realizing that by including yourself in the group you think I attacked, you are saying that you are a worse than useless person who is an unwitting agent of the forces of evil.

And if you are, indeed, that kind of person, don’t you think maybe you should think about that and decide for yourself what’s more important : my tone, or humanity.

I am sure you will come to the right answer eventually.

Anyhow, where the heck was I…. oh right, no more false division.

Note that it does not rule out genuine division. It just insists that it be based on something real and not something imaginary like race.

People are like dogs – sure, they come in dozens of varieties, but they are all still dogs, no matter how much a chihuahua is unlike a Saint Bernard.

And people are WAY less different than dog breeds.

Genuine division is sometimes necessary. You couldn’t take a “people are just people” approach to stopping Hitler, after all.

So while my goal will always be the unity and harmony of all humanity into one glorious meta-family, I understand that this is not going to happen in my lifetime.

I have heard the siren song of the idea that we are “due for a spiritual evolution” or that we are reaching some mystic date where the illusions will fall and all the world’s people will embrace as one and cotton candy ponies will ejaculate rainbow jizz on schoolboys.

OK, no need to be bitter now, he told himself.

Because the truth is, that idea appeals to me on a very deep level. I would love for there to be that kind of spiritual awakening.

But it’s not going to happen any time soon, and if ever does happen, it will be through the blood, sweat, and patience of hardcore pragmatists willing to get in there and do all the work necessary to bring it about, not a bunch of airy fairy hippies sitting around a circle and feeling very deep and profound.

For me, my ideals demand pragmatism. Anything less would be a self-betrayal. How could I be anything less than a focused pragmatist when there are problems that desperately need solving and only a pragmatic approach will work?

Effectiveness is the only measure that matters. Does it work? Does it work well enough? Could something else work even better?

And that means tackling the quantitative world. If you need to feed a camp full of displaced people in Syria. you don’t need a beautiful theory as to how much food you have or should have, you need a hard goddamned number so you know how much to give to each DP.

That’s why the world “idealism” has been, in many contexts, a dirty word to me. I associate it with people who say they believe as I do, but aren’t willing to sacrifice their own comfort of thought in order to reach concrete solutions.

Fuck those people. Get out of the way if you can’t lend a hand.

But really…. it’s all above the love.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.