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Curses

By Arthur Webster

One of the strangest things about curses is that we seldom recognise them for what they are.

The popular idea of a curse like 'boning' or 'hexing' carry effectiveness through the belief system that the cursed person was raised in. Without the belief, the curse doesn't work.

But what about the curses that we all live under?

The biggest blessing and the biggest curse of mankind is our sentience. We know that we live and we fear not living. The fear of death is something that we are all cursed with. We either simply fear death, fear the fact of being dead or the route by which we pass from life to death.

We have been blessed and cursed with imagination. A small animal will freeze to death not even knowing that it is dying while we cannot attain that level of fatalism until we have been through the agonies involved in the awareness of growing colder and the probable consequences.

Our fear of death makes us irrational in the presence of danger. Wild animals know that when a predator has killed, there is a safe period when they can relax their vigilance slightly.With our vivid imaginations, we are not able to ignore a wild predator, even if it is eating as we approach or spot it.

What about our imagination? What a curse that is!

Of course, it is true to say that it is our imagination that enables us to create and control our environment but it is also our imagination that will come up with all sorts of scenarios in which we lose what we have - even if there is negligible risk.

Of course, the biggest curse of all that we suffer is the way we have developed away from a natural and supportive tribal structure to a fractured, highly competitive and divisive system of I-ism and Me-ism. The human race in the so-called civilised west has crippled itself by abandonning all the natural constraints that would ensure a sound survival structure for humanity and adopting a crazy system of rules that serve little purpose but to make life less enjoyable. The natural herding instinct within humanity has been destroyed but nothing has replaced it.

THAT is a real curse - and it is self inflicted!

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snakesmum Apr 10, 2010 02:38

Some interesting thoughts. Something to ponder.

Michael A. Muehleisen Apr 10, 2010 06:30

So true, humanity is cursed by ism, the dominant ones being (racism, sexism, materialism, and extreme nationalism).
Maybe someday soon we will use our intellect, and rise above them.

I would like to think so but most isms are created by our intellect.

Racism is one of the isms that I find has caused more trouble than anything else becaue it is so artificial.

40 years ago in England there was no racial tension and then some idiot decided that I should no longer be able to call my black friend Sambo and he should no longer call me Honkie. Eventually this became a law of the land except that my black friend can still call me Honkie without being accused of racial prejudice. (He's black so can't be accused of racism).

We now have the situation in the UK where being a member of a racial minority, especially a coloured one, is a ticket to the most extreme licence as far as behaviour is concerned and an ever open cash box where Social Security hand outs are concerned. The fear of being accused of racism now removes all common sense from our administrators and the indigent population had better get used to being at the back of the queue.

It is so bad that when I made enquiries about returning to the UK if my eye-sight failed totally and I had to return, I was told that I could expect no assistance because (and I quote) "you will be treated like any WHITE immigrant". This was delivered in an Indian or Pakistani accent which I found difficult to decipher because the grammar and word use was ... er ... different.

A most thought provoking intel once again, Arthur. Your words keep me intrigued throughout the fine read.
Keep up the good work.
Best wishes.
Frederick

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