… even the Yankee Leviathan at the very height of its powers couldn’t have made Socialism work long term, for as the Bolshies discovered, there’s more to life than just shit, shoes, and bread. The old proverb says “A man with an empty belly has one problem; the man with a full belly has a thousand”, and like most old proverbs it’s 100% true. It’s no surprise our modern cat ladies — of both sexes and all however-many-we’re-up-to-now genders — don’t realize this, as you can overfeed a housecat into total somnolence, but anyone who has ever had so much as a dog knows what happens when all its immediate physical needs are satisfied: it grows bored.
Most “bad” dogs aren’t actually bad. They’re not misbehaving because they’re willful, or mean, or whatever. They’re just bored out of their fucking skulls, because the kind of bugman who gets a dog these days has no idea that you actually have to play with it, and pet it, and interact with it, in much the same way you have to interact with a young human. Given a dog’s limited intellect, the only thing it can think of to do to alleviate its boredom is chew on things, or dig in the yard, or piss on the rug, or, if all else fails, chew its own fur off.
Being slightly more complex critters, humans have more options, but bore a human enough — overfill his material needs, so that he’s stuffed to somnolence, but take his sense of purpose away — and you’ll see the exact same dog behaviors. Why do you think they shove all that metal shit in their faces? And no, I am absolutely not joking. Why all the huge, gaudy, gross tattoos? The constant changes of hair color and style?
Have you ever asked them?
Again, I’m 100% not joking. I know most of y’all avoid SJWs like the plague, and that’s a smart move, can’t blame you for it, but if you do, you’ll just have to trust me: I was in academia for a long time, so I was around not just SJWs, but bleeding-edge lunatic SJWs, and I asked them about it. One must be discreet about this, of course — hey, I’m thinking of getting a roll of toilet paper tattooed on my bicep, to remind me that We’re In This Together, what do you think? — but it’s fairly easy to do. And every time, they’d spin me some elaborate tale of how deep and meaningful it all is.
No, really. By some mental process I can’t begin to reproduce, getting Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s face tattooed on your calf is, to them, striking a blow at ambient civilization. That is the literal truth of their motivation. It’s the same reason the dog digs in the backyard, or pisses on the rug, or chews its own fur off: That’s the only agency it has, the only purpose it can find.
Severian, “Purpose”, Founding Questions, 2021-12-06.
July 2, 2025
QotD: The bane of socialism — boredom
Filed under: Economics, History, Politics, Quotations — Tags: Pets, Psychology, Severian, Socialism, SocialJustice, University — Nicholas @ 01:00
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