A METAPHOR FOR I DON'T KNOW WHAT

Laogzed's Podcast: Gormo's Insurrection

[Please note that were last minute changes in the podcast not reflected in this transcript.]

Okay, many things to say today.

First, some reminders.
The Homeless. If they have no friends or family, no dependents and no relatives, why keep them?

Okay, next. The Human Garrison Keeler and his horrible singing voice.

I demand that humans either abolish the death penalty or stop allowing Garrison Keeler a platform to sing. Garrison Keeler’s voice on its own is fine. But when he is allowed a croon, woe unto thee, innocent ears! His singing voice is a menace. Either Mr. Keeler or those around him must think that his voice is a natural, folksy. It is the mistaken principle. It is a logical fallacy.

First, let us look at grounds on which Garrison Keeler’s singing is defended. Most prominent is the argument from deterrence. His folk singing, it is asserted, is necessary to deter potential criminals. Murderers must be executed so that the lives of potential murder victims may be spared.

Two assertions are closely linked here. First, it is said that Garrison Keeler and his back up musicians must be put to death in order to protect the rest of us against those individuals who might sing badly if they were at large. This argument, based not strictly on deterrence but on incapacitation of known offenders, is inconclusive, since there are other effective means of protecting the innocent against known bad singers -- for example, Garrison Keeler’s horrendous singing voice, or the imprisonment of murderers for life in high-security institutions.

Second, it is said that the example of Garrison Keeler is needed to deter those who would otherwise commit murder. Knowledge that a crime is punishable by death will give the potential bad singer pause. This second argument rests on the assumption that Garrison Keeler does in fact reduce the incidence of bad singing -- a presupposition that must be tested against the evidence. Surprisingly, none of the available empirical data shows any significant correlation between the existence or use of the Garrison Keeler’s horrible singing voice and the incidence of other bad singing.

When studies have compared the homicide rates for the past 50 years in states that employ Garrison Keeler’s horrible singing and in adjoining states that have abolished it, the numbers have in every case been quite similar; Garrison Keeler, neither his singing nor his back-up singers has had no discernible effect on homicide rates. Further, the shorter-term effects of bad singing have been studied by examining the daily number of homicides reported in California over a ten-year period to ascertain whether the execution of bad singers reduced the number. Fewer homicides were reported on days immediately following days on which Garrison Keeler had sung, but this reduction was matched by an increase in the number of homicides on the day of his singing and the preceding day. Garrison Keeler’s horrible singing had no discernible effect on the weekly total of homicides.

The available evidence, then, fails to support the claim that Garrison Keeler deters capital crime. For this reason, I think, we may set aside the deterrence argument. But there is a stronger reason for rejecting the argument -- one that has to do with the way in which supporter of that argument would have us treat persons.

Let’s take my cousin, Gormo. Gormo has discovered transistor radio technology and he listens to human music. He usually listens to new age jazz, but when the Prairie Home Companion program comes on he sticks on to it as if his life counted on it. Garrison Keeler has hypnotized the suggestible, lazy mind of my worthless cousin.

I don’t know if any of what I have said has made any sense to you. I am afraid I am flustered. But whatever I have said heretofore is providence. What I have said I needed to say, and Dan, the host of my podcast, has recorded and we can analyze later.

Let me get to the meat of the matter. The primary subject of today’s long-awaited podcast:
The insurrection of Gormo and his execrable cohorts.

It has been awhile since I have been in contact with the human world because of problems in the troglodyte world.

I have been enraged…absolutely livid. Incandescent with fury.

Maybe I should calm down for a moment.

Let us listening to transcendent calming of the voice of god, spoken through Schubert’s lieder.


I feel a little better now, don’t you?

Only recently have I calmed down enough to be able to speak English. I am usually quite calm and can handle any situation with a cool head. But my temper has gotten the better of my judgement of late because the sovereignty of my kingdom has been jeopardized by thugs and traitors. Some known, some unknown.

The chief culprit is known to my regular listeners. He is the parasite who invaded my home many years ago. I had tolerated his activities and proclivities because he was my wife’s cousin. Because of her warm, cherished, shared childhood memories with her cousin, she had a soft point in her heart for him. But that soft point has since hardened. Gormo has gone too far, and he has now become an enemy of the family.

I know the singing of Garrison Keelor tainted an otherwise benign soul with his horrendous singing voice. But, in all honesty, there is no scapegoat here. I have to give Gormo credit. I never knew he had it in him. Calling him a parasite did not do him justice. That has become only too evident and manifest.

But I need to calm myself. I need to take my mind off the things that are out of my control. I know ignoring the problem won’t make it go away, but getting my emotions involved directly is not prudent. It is unprofessional, and who else but the god of the troglodytes should exhibit qualities of a professional leader? If I am not fit to lead, I am not fit to be a god, regardless of my lineage.

Many many things have happened since I’ve last spoken to you.

One time I was a young troglodyte. I went crazy. I made deals with demons. I sacrificed human babies and did unspeakable things with virgin girls and boys. Because my parents were so busy with their troglodytic duties—they jointly ruled the troglodytic empire, which has been reduced to a fraction of its size in the mean time, by the way—they had little time to raise me and my six-hundred and sixty-six brothers and sisters. I was living in LA when the heavy metal scene broke out and I was doing every drug imaginable. I started causing problems in human communities, and my parents suddenly took notice. But they did not know what to do with me. Are you surprised by my words? Yes, I was a problem child. Of the very worst kind. My parents locked me up and even though I was the first born they were considering removing possibility of my ascendance to the throne and leaving it to my younger, more tempered brother, Vaogzed. It did not occur to me at the time the gravity of the situation because I was in the grip of a hedonistic lifestyle. Many young princes succumb to the temptations of life. Many priests and doctors were summoned to try to cure me. My hormones were raging on fire, I only wanted to quench my base desires—I had an insatiable appetite for the basest of basest of the infinity of pleasures this world holds. And this led to the cruelties. My entire species suffered because of my heedless decadence. Of course, it had to stop. The Troglodytes do not believe in imprisonment, only rehabilitation. But this lack of prisons actually hides the truth of our system, that those who cannot be controlled are uncared for and die in their tracks, in their destitution. In the gutters: Social Darwinism, as humans would call it. It is a matter that I have been trying to rectify in my rule.

But let me return to the tale of my youth. How was I quote unquote corrected? It is a fluke, but a brilliant scholar who was only a few years my senior came around to our house. He was one of many troglodytes sought by my parents out of desperation to correct my impulses. This troglodyte, I believe, was among the most brilliant of our species. He died in a tragic death a few years ago and I still mourn the loss. Anyhow, he was one of the few (but increasing) number of troglodytes who were studying human culture since my father had uplifted the ban on human studies in the human year nineteen fourteen. This man was a student of Freud, by proxy, and particularly Freud’s student’s Alfred Adler. He was in parlance, a humanist. In English that is the word, “a humanist.” In the troglodyte language, “humanist” means someone who studies humans. This man was particularly interested in human religions, and was in secret a practicing Christian. This great troglodyte taught me about the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It may sound strange to you, but Jesus Christ was this troglodyte’s path out of my troubled waters. I learned to be patient, and learned that there were far greater joys in life than the material, the carnal, the sadistic.

Because humans and troglodytes have had troubled relations in the past, as I’ve gone into before, my parents were aghast at the developed situation. This prodigal son that was wasting his life with riotous living, had returned to the fold through a human-created mythology. I became a devote Christian, as much as a troglodyte could, and myself and my mentor created a small troglodytic Christian sect. The sect was left in tatters when I parted from it—leading to the tragedy of the death of my mentor. But that story is for another time. Once I had become “born again,” as some human Christians put it, I began to live a healthy life. But, then, after a time, I began to see that Christianity was yet another crutch, another drug. But by then I had been given charge of the troglodyte population, and my new path was leadership. I had responsibility, and I had no need to pray to this human god, Jesus Christ. I fell in love with a loving aristocratic troglodyte, my now wife and queen; and, consequently, lording over my kingdom and my children has given to me purpose, direction and discipline.

My greatest test since I won the battle over my own soul has been that what has happened in recent months.

Let me set the scene. We were eating dinner at the dinner pit. And all of a sudden Gormo leaps from his edge and waves an accusing arm at me, blaming me for all the ills of the world. Of late, this family malcontent had been mute, mercifully leaving his horrid opinions to himself. ***But these were the culminating pressures prior to a seismic event. Everyone at the pit lowered their bones, kept what we had in our mouths unchewed in our maws as Gormo let loose in a grating, venomous, high pitched tirade. The complexities of the dynamics of my wife’s family and mine are quite rich, and can make life interesting, but also unpleasant. Gormo had been a nuisance, as I mentioned before, but tolerable. To this day, I am still unsure of the specifics regarding all of Gormo’s complaints. He ranted on upon a litany of iniquities that had been committed against him, his brothers; an encyclopedic account of every wrong my ancestors committed against his own over the thousands of years. I was shocked that Gormo had such deep knowledge of troglodyte history! That he was such a scholar—however warped—of troglodyte history! An important lesson for everyone that we must learn time and time and again—appearances can be deceiving. His diatribe persisted until his high voice became raspy and piteous. I could hear the murmurs of my household, the murmurs of my kingdom. Gormo had overstepped his bounds. I held my tongue until it let loose of its own accord. I let Gormo know that this was not the time or place to address these matters. I commanded that he stop lest I detain him. I warned him he was acting in extreme distaste. This was not a good strategedy, as I have gone into before—Gormo is a master of all that is distasteful. This fed him his proclivity for all that is aesthetically unpleasing and thusly his vocal chords strengthened into a furious growl—he was becoming maniacal. I motioned for my guards to detain him. He evaded my elite guard and fled my estate and remained in hiding for many months.

In this period I was not worried. I was surprised by Gormo. I was flabbergasted. I was disturbed by his disrespect for my court; but I was happy to see the sight of his fat bottom leave my premises.

All this time I had thought he was as parasite. Indeed, he was a parasite; but so much more.

Gormo had been growing an army of malcontents. As I’ve gone on about in previous podcasts, I had thought all Gormo was, was a sloth. But no. He had been forming an army of malcontents. He was the figurehead of a movement of troglodytes unhappy with my government. Slowly, rumors filtered into my palace about the things these malcontent troglodytes thought about me and my rule. For one, they were angry with my social program called TASTE. TASTE is my program that has opened access to medical care and food programs for poor troglodytes. For example, my personal hunters provide needy troglodyte families with kegs of fresh human children’s blood that growing troglodytes need for happiness and health. I have hired demon doctors to provide low-cost health care to poorer regions of the subterranean world. I don’t hire dangerous demons. I hire the benevolent demons from the Amazon Basin who are regarded as experts and lovers of all amphibians. Some troglodytes are very unhappy with these social programs I’ve initiated. I consider myself a conservative—a precautionary conservative. But many troglodytes—mostly those in the established aristocracy I should add—are very unhappy with these programs. They consider them radical departures from tradition; they consider these programs of mine as radical mechanisms that are removing the underpinnings of troglodyte civilization. This obstinate attitude absolutely confounds me. It infuriates me. You see, my friends: On the contrary, I don’t consider my programs radical in the least. They are programs of infrastructure. A society cannot function without infrastructure. If you look at human history, there were great protestations of things that humans take for granted now, such as your sewage system, when they were first being developed. (Which, ironically, helped the troglodytes survive through the Victorian age, before the great migration—Again, a subject for another podcast.) By definition, society is comprised of all the individuals it contains! On that grounds, as the government, the government should allow its civilization it governs by allowing for growth—sustainable growth. But I believe in progress and the betterment of all living beings (hence my reaching out to humans as well!). A civilization not based on growth is based on general cannibalization—and I cannot abide a civilization based on general cannibalization. It becomes degradation, a general humiliation of tragic proportions which make the cosmos weep.

Another issue which these malcontents take umbrage with me upon is my contact with humans. Humans have long been considered the enemy. The average troglodyte greatly fears humans. On a whole, this is okay, because humans should be feared. They have great power and can be quite reactionary and close-minded regarding the well-being of other species. In addition, troglodytes were created by wizards in the old days and we were treated as slaves. So it is a deep-seated hatred that we have to contend with. I understand the complexity of the dynamics. The paradox is that this insurrection, spearheaded by my cousin Gormo, has been fueled by xenophobia—and Gormo himself is somewhat of a humanist—in the Troglodyte sense. As evident by his collection of human recordings. He even recently procured a DVD player to watch Hollywood movies! He still has not learned English, and I know he envies me and my ability to connect with open-minded human beings, like Dan. Sometimes we envy those who have access to worlds they can only imagine about. And the greater their imaginative powers, the greater their envy.

Maybe you can foresee the results of these forces at play. You see, the collective momentum Gormo’s raging envy was greater than his pea-brained idealogical justifications. The paradox of Gormo’s envy of access to the human world and his rallying an army of anti-humanists was something to be exploited.

Let me tell you how it has played out so far. The war is not over. But the insurrection has been contained.

It was a matter of controlling information. Gormo is good, but the resources at my disposal are quite formidable. I have built great trust from top to bottom in my civilization. I had many differences with my father, but the one thing we agreed upon that trust was most important. When I was at the depths of despair, when I had hit rock bottom in the LA metal scene back in the eighties, my dad was there with me. When the doctors and the priests other prognosticators left the room and it was just him and I, in soiled pajamas, in despair, strung-out, he said to me, “Laogzed, my eldest son, we have a blood-bond. But blood means nothing. Loyalty. Loyalty means loyalty to your children, to your society, to the earth, and everything it is connected to. We are born with duty. My duty is to you. Not because you are the heir to the troglodyte empire, but because it is within my bound. We are bound by circumstance.” And he kept his word. And all beings are bound by circumstance. I don’t claim to know why we are here. But we are. We cannot control things. But we are conscious beings. As a Christian might say, The Golden Rule. As it says in Matthew:"All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets." Or we may call it the ethics of reciprocity. The young are bound to the old, the rich bound to the poor. This is the foundation of my ethics. And I try my utmost to apply my beliefs in everything I do.

Thus it was a matter of providence. Gormo’s insurrection was based on a paradox, and since I had the greater resources, and from top to bottom my system is glued by loyalty, his slobby adventure failed. Oh, it was a tough fight. His friends flooded the sewers, caused great disturbances in several cavern-city centers, but in the end he was pulled down by his contradictory propaganda. His ideology could fortify his followers for only too long until they abandoned him. Gormo is now in self-imposed exile. I welcomed him back, but he rejected my offer. Meanwhile the seed of discontent has been sown. I am afraid that their might be others in his wake with greater resolve, or worse, competence. There may be a troglodyte out there with determination to take me down. But I will fight to the bitter end. If I am known as a reformer, so be it. That is my fate. If lines in the aristocracy have been drawn, I am unaware of them. Everybody has food. It is just the un-purposed ones that I worry about. I may have to bring them to Christ. Ennui destroys. Illusion sustains. That’s the sad fact of life.

Anyhow, I leave you with a beautiful melody. It fills my heart with its tragic melody. Until next time, as the unusual idiom goes. Thank you for listening.