I've been away from Skins's island for the past few days, and have the boat dry-docked until later this week, as it's going to be an unpleasant (but anticipated, and readied for) week, and the last thing I need in real life is the primitives messing with my mind.
Anyway.
Even though the primitives on Skins's island are out of sight, they're rarely out of mind.
One thing that blows the mind is the primitive definition of "courage." We've seen the primitives applaud the pink underwear women and the Swanson TV dinner primitive for their "courage" in throwing temper-tantrums in public, as if such acts are to be equated with the heroics of dissidents in other places, other times.
Which of course is nonsense; there is no similarity.
Courage is when one undertakes to do, or say, something when there is a real peril, a real risk, of serious consequences.
A "courageous" temper-tantrumer here in George Bush's America can yell-and-scream all he wishes, and face either no consequences or very mild consequences that scarcely disrupt one's daily life, such as maybe a ticket that is usually dismissed.
Truly courageous dissent is when one stands in front of a moving tank, and while he hopes the tank will stop, has reasonable doubts that it will stop.
Truly courageous dissent is when one speaks out, and runs the very likely risk of incurring nacht und nebel, disappearing into the night and fog without a trace, all signs of his existence obliterated from the memory of man (but fortunately not from the memory of God).
Courage involves peril and risk; at least that is the dictionary definition, and the commonly-accepted definition of the word. One suspects the primitives would do well to invest in a dictionary.
Another thing is the primitive definition of "compassion."
This comes up frequently when the primitives adulate Vast Teddy, considered "compassionate" because he "cares" about others.....whereas in all stark honesty, Vast Teddy has never been concerned for anybody but Vast Teddy.
Vast Teddy of course has sponsored, and sometimes even gotten passed, legislation to "improve" the lot of the "poor," which one assumes might be a good thing, but Vast Teddy is being "compassionate" with other people's money, not his.
I could be as "generous" as Hell with other people's money.
A third thing is the primitive definition of "sacrifice;" I recall one bonfire on Skins's island about some primitives donating old computers (rather than cash, which such places, really, prefer) to women's centers and somesuch, and feeling very noble about it.
But really, that's nothing more than junk disposal, giving away unwanted or unneeded things.
"Sacrifice" entails give someone the shirt off one's back.....when one has no second shirt. "Sacrifice" means "going without," not the giving-away of surplus property.
There's of course many other curious ways the primitives think, but it's hot and humid in the Sandhills of Nebraska, and I'm not up to describing such phenomenons in a three-volume set.
